All that, what you call it ?--wooing ?--is waste of time.

I like things to happen, quick, quick, one after the other--or else--" "Or else what ?" "To do nothing, nothing but lie in the sun, like this afternoon." "Yes," said I dreamily, after I had again thrown myself by her side.
"Like this afternoon." I sit at my window and look out upon the strip of beach, the hauled-up fishing boats and the nets hung out to dry looming vague in the starlight, and I hear the surf's rhythmical moan a few yards beyond; and it beats into my ears the idiot phrase that has recurred all the evening.
But why should I be mad?
For filling my soul with God's utmost glory of earth and sea and sky?
For filling my heart with purest pleasure in the intimate companionship of fresh and fragrant maidenhood?
For giving myself up for once to a dream of sense clouded by never a thought that was not serenely fair?
For feeling young again?
I shall read myself to sleep with _La Dame de Monsoreau_, which I have procured from the circulating library in the Rue Alphonse Karr--( the literary horticulturist is the genius loci and the godfather of my landlady)--and I will empty flagons with Pere Gorenflot and ride on errands of life and death with Chicot, prince of jesters, and walk lovingly between the valiant Bussy and Henri Quatre.

By this, if by nothing else, I recognise the beneficence of the high gods--they have given us tired men Dumas..