"Yes, Mimi, yes. You loved him at those moments when a woman's heart changes place. You loved him; do nothing to deny it; it is your justification." "Bah!" said Mimi, "he loves another now." "True," said Marcel, "but no matter. Later on the remembrance of you will be to him like the flowers that we place fresh and full of perfume between the leaves of a book, and which long afterwards we find dead, discolored, and faded, but still always preserving a vague perfume of their first freshness." * * * * * One evening, when she was humming in a low tone to herself, Vicomte Paul said to Mimi, "What are you singing, dear?" "The funeral chant of our loves, that my lover Rodolphe has lately composed." And she began to sing:-- "I have not a sou now, my dear, and the rule In such a case surely is soon to forget, So tearless, for she who would weep is a fool, You'll blot out all mem'ry of me, eh, my pet? Well, still all the same we have spent as you know Some days that were happy--and each with its night, They did not last long, but, alas, here below, The shortest are ever those we deem most bright." CHAPTER XXI Romeo and Juliet Attired like a fashion plate out of his paper, the "Scarf of Iris," with new gloves, polished boots, freshly shaven face, curled hair, waxed moustache, stick in hand, glass in eye, smiling, youthful, altogether nice looking, in such guise our friend, the poet Rodolphe, might have been seen one November evening on the boulevard waiting for a cab to take him home. Rodolphe waiting for a cab? What cataclysm had then taken place in his existence? At the very hour that the transformed poet was twirling his moustache, chewing the end of an enormous regalia, and charming the fair sex, one of his friends was also passing down the boulevard. It was the philosopher, Gustave Colline. Rodolphe saw him coming, and at once recognized him; as indeed, who would not who had once seen him? Colline as usual was laden with a dozen volumes. Clad in that immortal hazel overcoat, the durability of which makes one believe that it must have been built by the Romans, and with his head covered by his famous broad brimmed hat, a dome of beaver, beneath which buzzed a swarm of hyperphysical dreams, and which was nicknamed Mambrino's Helmet of Modern Philosophy, Gustave Colline was walking slowly along, chewing the cud of the preface of a book that had already been in the press for the last three months--in his imagination. As he advanced towards the spot where Rodolphe was standing, Colline thought for a moment that he recognized him, but the supreme elegance displayed by the poet threw the philosopher into a state of doubt and uncertainty.