"Rodolphe with gloves and a walking stick. Chimera! Utopia! Mental aberration! Rodolphe curled and oiled; he who has not so much as Father Time. What could I be thinking of? Besides, at this present moment my unfortunate friend is engaged in lamentations, and is composing melancholy verses upon the departure of Mademoiselle Mimi, who, I hear, has thrown him over. Well, for my part, I too, regret the loss of that young woman. She was a dab hand at making coffee, which is the beverage of serious minds. But I trust that Rodolphe will console himself, and soon get another Kettle-holder." Colline was so delighted with his wretched joke, that he would willingly have applauded it, had not the stern voice of philosophy woke up within him, and put an energetic stop to this perversion of wit. However, as he halted close to Rodolphe, Colline was forced to yield to evidence. It was certainly Rodolphe, curled, gloved, and with a cane. It was impossible, but it was true. "Eh! Eh! By Jove!" said Colline. "I am not mistaken. It is you, I am certain." "So am I," replied Rodolphe. Colline began to look at his friend, imparting to his countenance the expression pictorially made use of by M. Lebrun, the king's painter in ordinary, to express surprise. But all at once he noted two strange articles with which Rodolphe was laden--firstly, a rope ladder, and secondly, a cage, in which some kind of a bird was fluttering. At this sight, Gustave Colline's physiognomy expressed a sentiment which Monsieur Lebrun, the king's painter in ordinary, forgot to depict in his picture of "The Passions." "Come," said Rodolphe to his friend, "I see very plainly the curiosity of your mind peeping out through the window of your eyes; and I am going to satisfy it, only, let us quit the public thoroughfare. It is cold enough here to freeze your questions and my answers." And they both went into a cafe. Colline's eyes remained riveted on the rope ladder as well as the cage, in which the bird, thawed by the atmosphere of the cafe, began to sing in a language unknown to Colline, who was, however, a polyglottist. "Well then," said the philosopher pointing to the rope ladder, "what is that?" "A connecting link between my love and me," replied Rodolphe, in lute like accents. "And that?" asked Colline, pointing to the bird. "That," said the poet, whose voice grew soft as the summer breeze, "is a clock." "Tell me without parables--in vile prose, but truly." "Very well. Have you read Shakespeare?" "Have I read him? 'To be or not to be?' He was a great philosopher. Yes, I have read him." "Do your remember _Romeo and Juliet_?" "Do I remember?" said Colline, and he began to recite: "Wilt thou begone? It is not yet day, It was the nightingale, and not the lark." "I should rather think I remember. But what then?"