Occident. Such a dissertation, it appeared to me, would have been
an ingenious method of thanking the lady for having thus appeared to
an old scholar, contrary to the invariable custom of her kindred,
who never show themselves but to innocent children or ignorant
village-folk.
Because one happens to be a fairy, one is none the less a woman, I
said to myself; and since Madame Recamier, according to what I heard
J. J. Ampere say, used to blush with pleasure when the little chimney-
sweeps opened their eyes as wide as they could to look at her, surely
the supernatural lady seated upon the "Cosmography of Munster" might
feel flattered to hear an erudite man discourse learnedly about her,
as about a medal, a seal, a fibula, or a token. But such an
undertaking, which would have cost my timidity a great deal, became
totally out of the question when I observed the Lady of the
Cosmography suddenly take from an alms purse hanging at her girdle
the very smallest of nuts I had ever seen, crack the shells between
her teeth, and throw them at my nose, while she nibbled the kernels
with the gravity of a sucking child.
At this conjuncture, I did what the dignity of science demanded of
me--I remained silent. But the nut-shells caused such a painful
tickling that I put up my hand to my nose, and found, to my great
surprise, that my spectacles were straddling the very end of it--
so that I was actually looking at the lady, not through my spectacles,
but over them. This was incomprehensible, because my eyes, worn out
over old texts, cannot ordinarily distinguish anything without
glasses--could not tell a melon from a decanter, though the two were
placed close up to my nose.
That nose of mine, remarkable for its size, its shape, and its
coloration, legitimately attracted the attention of the fairy; for
she seized my goose-quill pen, which was sticking up from the ink-
bottle like a plume, and she began to pass the feather-end of that
pen over my nose. I had had more than once, in company, occasion
to suffer cheerfully from the innocent mischief of young ladies,
who made me join their games, and would offer me their cheeks to
kiss through the back of a chair, or invite me to blow out a candle
which they would lift suddenly above the range of my breath. But
until that moment no person of the fair sex had ever subjected me to
such a whimsical piece of familiarity as that of tickling my nose
with my own feather pen. Happily I remembered the maxim of my late
grandfather, who was accustomed to say that everything was permissible
on the part of ladies, and that whatever they do to us is to be
regarded as a grace and a favour. Therefore, as a grace and a favour
I received the nutshells and the titillations with my own pen, and
I tried to smile. Much more!--I even found speech.
"Madame," I said, with dignified politeness, "you accord the honour
of a visit not to a silly child, not to a boor, but to a bibliophile
who is very happy to make your acquaintance, and who knows that long
ago you used to make elf-knots in the manes of mares at the crib,
drink the milk from the skimming-pails, slip graines-a-gratter down
the backs of our great-grandmothers, make the hearth sputter in the
faces of the old folks, and, in short, fill the house with disorder
and gaiety. You can also boast of giving the nicest frights in the
world to lovers who stayed out in the woods too late of evenings.
But I thought you had vanished out of existence at least three