warm of pleasant thoughts hummed in his heart. Passing
by a little tavern on the outer Boulevard he remembered that one day,
being caught by a storm, he had taken shelter there with Francine, and
that they had dined there. Jacques went in and had dinner served at the
same table. His dessert was served on a plate with a pictorial pattern;
he recognized it and remembered that Francine had spent half an hour in
guessing the rebus painted on it, and recollected, too, a song sung by
her when inspired by the violet hued wine which does not cost much and
has more gaiety in it than grapes. But this flood of sweet remembrances
recalled his love without reawakening his grief. Accessible to
superstition, like all poetical and dreamy intellects, Jacques fancied
that it was Francine, who, hearing his step beside her, had wafted him
these pleasant remembrances from her grave, and he would not damp them
with a tear. He quitted the tavern with firm step, erect head, bright
eye, beating heart, and almost a smile on his lips, murmuring as he went
along the refrain of Francine's song--

"Love hovers round my dwelling
My door must open be."

This refrain in Jacques' mouth was also a recollection, but then it was
already a song, and perhaps without suspecting it he took that evening
the first step along the road which leads from sorrow to melancholy, and
thence onward to forgetfulness. Alas! Whatever one may wish and whatever
one may do the eternal and just law of change wills it so.

Even as the flowers, sprung perhaps from Francine, had sprouted on her
tomb the sap of youth stirred in the heart of Jacques, in which the
remembrance of the old love awoke new aspirations for new ones. Besides
Jacques belonged to the race of artists and poets who make passion an
instrument of art and poetry, and whose mind only shows activity in
proportion as it is set in motion by the motive powers of the heart.
With Jacques invention was really the daughter of sentiment, and he put
something of himself into the smallest things he did. He perceived that
souvenirs no longer sufficed him, and that, like the millstone which
wears itself away when corn runs short, his heart was wearing away for
want of emotion. Work had no longer any charm for him, his power of
invention, of yore feverish and spontaneous, now only awoke after much
patient effort. Jacques was discontented, and almost envied the life of
his old friends, the Water Drinkers.

He s