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,