Your lace-mender is too good for you, but not good enough for me; neither physically nor morally does she come up to my ideal of a woman.

No; I dream of something far beyond that pale-faced, excitable little Helvetian (by-the-by she has infinitely more of the nervous, mobile Parisienne in her than of the the robust 'jungfrau').

Your Mdlle.

Henri is in person "chetive", in mind "sans caractere", compared with the queen of my visions.

You, indeed, may put up with that "minois chiffone"; but when I marry I must have straighter and more harmonious features, to say nothing of a nobler and better developed shape than that perverse, ill-thriven child can boast." "Bribe a seraph to fetch you a coal of fire from heaven, if you will," said I, "and with it kindle life in the tallest, fattest, most boneless, fullest-blooded of Ruben's painted women--leave me only my Alpine peri, and I'll not envy you." With a simultaneous movement, each turned his back on the other.