on the guitar!

The marionnettes made a very dismal entertainment. They performed a
piece, called _Pyramus and Thisbe_, in five mortal acts, and all written
in Alexandrines fully as long as the performers. One marionnette was the
king; another the wicked counselor; a third, credited with exceptional
beauty, represented Thisbe; and then there were guards, and obdurate
fathers, and walking gentlemen. Nothing particular took place during the
two or three acts that I sat out; but you will be pleased to learn that
the unities were properly respected, and the whole piece, with one
exception, moved in harmony with classical rules. That exception was the
comic countryman, a lean marionnette in wooden shoes, who spoke in prose
and in a broad _patois_ much appreciated by the audience. He took
unconstitutional liberties with the person of his sovereign; kicked his
fellow-marionnettes in the mouth with his wooden shoes, and whenever
none of the versifying suitors were about, made love to Thisbe on his
own account in comic prose.

This fellow's evolutions, and the little prologue, in which the showman
made a humorous eulogium of his troop, praising their indifference to
applause and hisses, and their single devotion to their art, were the
only circumstances in the whole affair that you could fancy would so
much as raise a smile. But the villagers of Precy seemed delighted.
Indeed, so long as a thing is an exhibition, and you pay to see it, it
is nearly certain to amuse. If we were charged so much a head for
sunsets, or if God sent round a drum before the hawthorns came in
flower, what a work should we not make about their beauty! But these
things, like good companions, stupid people early cease to observe; and
the Abstract Bagman tittups past in his spring gig, and is positively
not aware of the flowers along the lane, or the scenery of the weather
overhead.

BACK TO THE WORLD

Of the next two days' sail little remains in my mind, and nothing
whatever in my note-book. The river streamed on steadily through
pleasant riverside landscapes. Washerwomen in blue dresses, fishers in
blue blouses, diversified the green banks; and the relation of the two
colours was like that of the flower and the leaf in the forget-me-not. A
symphony in forget-me-not; I think Theophile Gautier might thus have
characterized that two days' panorama. The sky was blue and cloudless,
and the sliding surface of the river held up, in smooth places, a m