; so I wrote her a
polite little note, in which I expressed my regret that our tastes were
so dissimilar and our paths in life so far apart; wished her every
happiness; assured her that I should ever remember her with friendly
regard; and signed my name with a tremendous flourish at the bottom of
the second page. With the note, however, I sent her a raised pie and a
red and green shawl, of which I begged her acceptance in token of amity;
and as neither of those gifts was returned, I concluded that she ate the
one and wore the other, and that there was peace between us.

But the scales of fortune as they go up for one, go down for another.
This man's luck is balanced by that man's ruin--Orestes falls sick, and
Pylades returns from Kissingen cured of his lumbago--old Croesus dies,
and little Miss Kilmansegg comes into the world with a golden spoon in
her mouth, So it fell out with Franz Mueller and myself. As I happily
steered clear of Charybdis, he drifted into Scylla--in other words, just
as I recovered from my second attack of the tender passion, he caught
the epidemic and fancied himself in love with the fair Marie.

I say "fancied," because his way of falling in love was so unlike my
way, that I could scarcely believe it to be the same complaint. It
affected neither his appetite, nor his spirits, nor his wardrobe. He
made as many puns and smoked as many pipes as usual. He did not even buy
a new hat. If, in fact, he had not told me himself, I should never have
guessed that anything whatever was the matter with him.

It came out one day when he was pressing me to go with him to a certain
tea-party at Madame Marotte's, in the Rue St. Denis.

"You see," said he, "it is _la petite_ Marie's fete; and the party's in
her honor; and they'd be so proud if we both went to it; and--and, upon
my soul, I'm awfully fond of that little girl"....

"Of Marie Marotte?"

He nodded.

"You are not serious," I said.

"I am as serious," he replied, "as a dancing dervish."

And then, for I suppose I looked incredulous, he went on to justify
himself.

"She's very good," he said, "and very pretty. Quite a Madonna face, to
my thinking."

"You may see a dozen such Madonna faces among the nurses in the
Luxembourg Gardens, every afternoon of your life," said I.

"Oh, if you come to that, every woman is like every other woman, up to a
certain point."

"_Les femmes se suivent et se ressemblent toujours_," said I, parodying
a well-kn