that she shall hear of it, and you, Monsieur Lampron, that the picture
shall be framed."

She showed us to the top of the stairs, did little Madame Plumet, pleased
at having won over her husband, at having shown herself so cunning, and
at being employed in a conspiracy of love. In the street Lampron shook me
by the hand. "Good-by, my friend," he said; "happy men don't need
company. Four days hence, at noon, I shall come to fetch you, and we will
pay our first visit to the Salon together."

Yes, I was a happy man! I walked fast, without seeing anything, my eyes
lost in day dreams, my ears listening to celestial harmonies. I seemed to
wear a halo. It abashed me somewhat; for there is something insolent in
proclaiming on the housetops: "Look up at me, my heart is full, Jeanne is
going to love me!" Decidedly, my brain was affected.

Near the fountain in the Luxembourg, in front of the old palace where the
senate sits, two little girls were playing. One pushed the other, who
fell down crying,

"Naughty Jeanne, naughty girl!" I rushed to pick her up, and kissed her
before the eyes of her astonished nurse, saying, "No, Mademoiselle, she
is the most charming girl in the world!"

And M. Legrand! I still blush when I think of my conversation with M.
Legrand. He was standing in a dignified attitude at the door of his shop.

"ITALIAN WAREHOUSE; DRESSED PROVISIONS;
SPECIALTY IN COLONIAL PRODUCE."

He and I are upon good terms; I buy oranges, licorice from him, and rum
when I want to make punch. But there are distinctions. Well, to-day I
called him "Dear Monsieur Legrand;" I addressed him, though I had nothing
to buy; I asked after his business; I remarked to him, "What a heavenly
day, Monsieur Legrand! We really have got fine weather at last!"

He looked up to the top of the street, and looked down again at me, but
refrained from differing, out of respect.

And, as a matter of fact, I noticed afterward that there was a most
unpleasant drizzle.

To wind up with, just now as I was coming home after dinner, I passed a
workman and his family in the Rue Bonaparte, and the man pointed after
me, saying:

"Look! there goes a poet."

He was right. In me the lawyer's clerk is in abeyance, the lawyer of
to-morrow has disappeared, only the poet is left--that is to say, the
essence of youth freed from the parasitic growths of everyday life. I
feel it roused and stirring. How sweet life is, and what wonderful
inst