the ladies with whom he dilated upon the value of his jewels. So it
was that, after listening to the gentle discourse of the ladies, who
tried to wheedle and to fondle him to obtain a favour from him, the
good Touranian would return to his home, dreamy as a poet, wretched as
a restless cuckoo, and would say to himself, "I must take to myself a
wife. She would keep the house tidy, keep the plates hot for me, fold
the clothes for me, sew my buttons on, sing merrily about the house,
tease me to do everything according to her taste, would say to me as
they all say to their husbands when they want a jewel, 'Oh, my own
pet, look at this, is it not pretty?' And every one in the quarter
will think of my wife and then of me, and say 'There's a happy man.'
Then the getting married, the bridal festivities, to fondle Madame
Silversmith, to dress her superbly, give her a fine gold chain, to
worship her from crown to toe, to give her the whole management of the
house, except the cash, to give her a nice little room upstairs, with
good windows, pretty, and hung around with tapestry, with a wonderful
chest in it and a fine large bed, with twisted columns and curtains of
yellow silk. He would buy her beautiful mirrors, and there would
always be a dozen or so of children, his and hers, when he came home
to greet him." Then wife and children would vanish into the clouds. He
transferred his melancholy imaginings to fantastic designs, fashioned
his amorous thoughts into grotesque jewels that pleased their buyers
well, they not knowing how many wives and children were lost in the
productions of the good man, who, the more talent he threw into his
art, the more disordered he became. Now if God had not had pity upon
him, he would have quitted this world without knowing what love was,
but would have known it in the other without that metamorphosis of the
flesh which spares it, according to Monsieur Plato, a man of some
authority, but who, not being a Christian, was wrong. But, there!
these preparatory digressions are the idle digressions and fastidious
commentaries which certain unbelievers compel a man to wind about a
tale, swaddling clothes about an infant when it should run about stark
naked. May the great devil give them a clyster with his red-hot
three-pronged fork. I am going on with my story now without further
circumlocution.

This is what happened to the silversmith in the one-and-fortieth year
of his age. One Sabbath-day while walking