that a note was lacking to the full harmony of my life, and I threw
myself upon a bank. I tried not to see the artificial roads of
the forest, alive with city carriages. I believed myself lost in a
primeval wood, and I examined the state of my heart. I perceived with
concern that that organ was still lacerated. The languid, musical
pageant of my youth streamed toward me again through the leafy aisles,
and I remembered my high aspirings, my poems, my ideals: the floating
vision of a Dark Ladye passed or looked up at me through the broken
waves of Oblivion; she listened to my rhapsodies with the old puzzling
silence; she confided to me certain Sibylline leaves out of her diary;
then she receded, cold and unresponsive, a statue cut out of a shadow.
I was obliged to untie my cravat. Finally, I fell asleep and dreamed
of Mary Ashburton crowned with the neat workwoman's cap of Francine
Joliet. I returned to dinner considerably exalted, and just touched
with rheumatism.

The soup was glacial, the roast was steaming, the conversation was
geographical. "Pray, M. Flemming," said my neighbor (he had been
stealing a look at the register of visitors' names), "can cattle be
wintered out of doors as far north as Pennsylvania, or only up to
Virginia?"

"Pray," said another, "is not New York situated between the North
River and the Hudson?"

The prayer of a third made itself audible: "Ought we to say
'Delightful _Wy_oming,' after Campbell, or Wy_o_ming?"

"We ought to eat with thankfulness the good things set before us," I
replied, with some presence of mind. "Excuse me, gentlemen," I added,