have
practised vice; for among the most modest women few would thus have
sacrificed life, in whatever high state of religion you look for them.

EPILOGUE

Oh! mad little one, thou whose business it is to make the house merry,
again hast thou been wallowing, in spite of a thousand prohibitions,
in that slough of melancholy, whence thou hast already fished out
Bertha, and come back with thy tresses dishevelled, like a girl who
has been ill-treated by a regiment of soldiers! Where are thy golden
aiglets and bells, thy filigree flowers of fantastic design? Where
hast thou left thy crimson head-dress, ornamented with precious
gewgaws that cost a minot of pearls?

Why spoil with pernicious tears thy black eyes, so pleasant when
therein sparkles the wit of a tale, that popes pardon thee thy sayings
for the sake of thy merry laughter, feel their souls caught between
the ivory of thy teeth, have their hearts drawn by the rose point of
thy sweet tongue, and would barter the holy slipper for a hundred of
the smiles that hover round thy vermillion lips? Laughing lassie, if
thou wouldst remain always fresh and young, weep no more; think of
riding the brideless fleas, of bridling with the golden clouds thy
chameleon chimeras, of metamorphosing the realities of life into
figures clothed with the rainbow, caparisoned with roseate dreams, and
mantled with wings blue as the eyes of the partridge. By the Body and
the Blood, by the Censer and the Seal, by the Book and the Sword, by
the Rag and the Gold, by the Sound and the Colour, if thou does but
return once into that hovel of elegies where eunuchs find ugly women
for imbecile sultans, I'll curse thee; I'll rave at thee; I'll make
thee fast from roguery and love; I'll--

Phist! Here she is astride a sunbeam with a volume that is ready to
burst with merry meteors! She plays in their prisms, tearing about so
madly, so wildly, so boldly, so contrary to good sense, so contrary to
good manners, so contrary to everything, that one has to touch her
with long feathers, to follow her siren's tail in the golden facets
which trifle among the artifices of these new pearls of laughter. Ye
gods! but she is sporting herself in them like a hundred schoolboys in
a hedge full of blackberries, after vespers. To the devil with the
magister! The volume is finished! Out upon work! What ho! my jovial
friends; this way!

End of Project Gutenberg's Droll Stories,