unconsciously, indeed, as she would have cast it upon the church,
that, fumbling hastily for my spectacles to enjoy the boon more fully,
I thoughtlessly advanced upon the apple-stand, and, in some
indescribable manner, tripping, down we all fell into the street, old
woman, apples, baskets, stand, and I, in promiscuous confusion. As I
struggled there, somewhat bewildered, yet sufficiently self-possessed
to look after the carriage, I beheld that beautiful woman looking at
us through the back-window (you could not have done it; the integrity
of your shirt-collar would have interfered,) and smiling pleasantly,
so that her going around the corner was like a gentle sunset, so
seemed she to disappear in her own smiling; or--if you choose, in view
of the apple difficulties--like a rainbow after a storm.

If the beautiful Aurelia recalls that event, she may know of my
existence; not otherwise. And even then she knows me only as a funny
old gentleman, who, in his eagerness to look at her, tumbled over an
apple-woman.

My fancy from that moment followed her. How grateful I was to the
wrinkled Eve's extortion, and to the untoward tumble, since it
procured me the sight of that smile. I took my sweet revenge from
that. For I knew that the beautiful Aurelia entered the house of her
host with beaming eyes, and my fancy heard her sparkling story. You
consider yourself happy because you are sitting by her and helping her
to a lady-finger, or a macaroon, for which she smiles. But I was her
theme for ten mortal minutes. She was my bard, my blithe historian.
She was the Homer of my luckless Trojan fall. She set my mishap to
music, in telling it. Think what it is to have inspired Urania; to
have called a brighter beam into the eyes of Miranda, and do not think
so much of passing Aurelia the mottoes, my dear young friend.