nothing the matter with him; but the doctor (it was apparently "at
temp. of tale"--1834, while the port was getting ready,--the practice of
French physicians, to receive their patients in dressing-gowns)
discovers that he is in an advanced stage of Dumas _fils'_ favourite
_poitrine_. He says, however, nothing about it (which seems odd) to his
patient, merely prescribing roast-meat and Bordeaux; but (which seems
odder) he _does_ mention it to his daughter Antonine, the Lady with the
Ankles. For the moment nothing happens. But Gustave the friend has for
mistress an adorable _grisette_--amiability, in the widest sense, _nez
retrousse_, garret, and millinery all complete--whom Madame de Pereux,
Edmond's mother--a _sainte_, but without prejudices--tolerates, and in
fact patronises. It is arranged that Nichette shall call on Antonine to
ask, as a milliner, for her custom. Quite unexpected explanations follow
in a not uningenious manner, and the explosion is completed by Edmond's
opening (not at all treacherously) a letter addressed to Gustave and
containing the news of his own danger. The rest of the story need not be
told at length. A miraculous cure effected by M. Devaux, Antonine's
father; marriage of the pair; pensioning off of Nichette, and marriage
of Gustave to another adorable girl (ankles not here specified);
establishment of Nichette at Tours in partnership with a respectable
friend, etc., etc., can easily be supplied by any novel-reader.

But here the young author's nascent seriousness, and his still existing
Buskbody superstition, combine to spoil the book, not merely, as in the
_Tristan_ case, to top-hamper it. Having given us eight pages of rather
cheap sermonising about the poetry of youth not lasting; having
requested us to imagine Manon and Des Grieux "decrepit and catarrhous,"
Paul and Virginie shrivelled and toothless, Werther and Charlotte united
but wrinkled,[368] he proceeds to tell us how, though Gustave and his
Laurence are as happy as they can be, though Nichette has forgotten her
woes but kept her income and is married to a book-seller, things are not
well with the other pair. Antonine loves her husband frantically, but he
has become quite indifferent to her--says, indeed, that he really does
not know whether he ever _did_ love her. Later still we take leave of
him, his "poetry" having ended in a prefecture, and his passion in a
_liaison_, commonplace to the _n_th, with a provincial lawyer's wife.
_L