such a high and subtle idea of harmony that
nothing can ever fulfill my ideal. But you will call me a madman. Listen
to me. A woman, in my opinion, may have an exquisite soul and charming
body without that body and that soul being in perfect harmony with one
another. I mean that persons who have noses made in a certain shape
should not be expected to think in a certain fashion. The fat have no
right to make use of the same words and phrases as the thin. You, who
have blue eyes, madame, cannot look at life and judge of things
and events as if you had black eyes. The shade of your eyes should
correspond, by a sort of fatality, with the shade of your thought. In
perceiving these things, I have the scent of a bloodhound. Laugh if you
like, but it is so.

And yet, once I imagined that I was in love for an hour, for a day. I
had foolishly yielded to the influence of surrounding circumstances. I
allowed myself to be beguiled by a mirage of Dawn. Would you like me to
tell you this short story?

I met, one evening, a pretty, enthusiastic little woman who took a
poetic fancy to spend a night with me in a boat on a river. I would have
preferred a room and a bed; however, I consented to the river and the
boat.

It was in the month of June. My fair companion chose a moonlight night
in order the better to stimulate her imagination.

We had dined at a riverside inn and set out in the boat about ten
o'clock. I thought it a rather foolish kind of adventure, but as my
companion pleased me I did not worry about it. I sat down on the seat
facing her; I seized the oars, and off we starred.

I could not deny that the scene was picturesque. We glided past a wooded
isle full of nightingales, and the current carried us rapidly over the
river covered with silvery ripples. The tree toads uttered their shrill,
monotonous cry; the frogs croaked in the grass by the river's bank,
and the lapping of the water as it flowed on made around us a kind of
confused murmur almost imperceptible, disquieting, and gave us a vague
sensation of mysterious fear.

The sweet charm of warm nights and of streams glittering in the
moonlight penetrated us. It was delightful to be alive and to float
along thus, and to dream and to feel at one's side a sympathetic and
beautiful young woman.

I was somewhat affected, somewhat agitated, somewhat intoxicated by the
pale brightness of the night and the consciousness of my proximity to a
lovely woman.

"Come and sit