Honiton point and costly Mechlin lace, With gothic guipure of a creamy white-- The matchless cobwebs of long vanished days-- Combine to make your presence rich and bright. But I preferred a simpler guise than that, Your frock of muslin or plain calico, Simple adornments, with a veilless hat, Boots, black or grey, a collar white and low. The splendor your admirers now adore Will never bring me back my ancient heats; And you are dead and buried, all the more For the silk shroud where heart no longer beats. So when I worked at this funereal dirge, Where grief for a lost lifetime stands confessed, I wore a clerk's costume of sable serge, Though not gold eye glasses or pleated vest. My penholder was wrapped in mournful crape, The paper with black lines was bordered round On which I labored to provide escape For love's last memory hidden in the ground. And now, when all the heart that I can save Is used to furnish forth its epitaph. Gay as a sexton digging his own grave I burst into a wild and frantic laugh; A laugh engendered by a mocking vein; The pen I grasped was trembling as I wrote; And even while I laughed, a scalding rain Of tears turned all the writing to a blot. It was the 24th of December, and that evening the Latin Quarter bore a special aspect. Since four o'clock in the afternoon the pawnbroking establishments and the shops of the second hand clothes dealers and booksellers had been encumbered by a noisy crowd, who, later in the evening, took the ham and beef shops, cook shops, and grocers by assault. The shopmen, even if they had had a hundred arms, like Briareus, would not have sufficed to serve the customers who struggled with one another for provisions. At the baker's they formed a string as in times of dearth. The wine shop keepers got rid of the produce of three vintages, and a clever statistician would have found it difficult to reckon up the number of knuckles of ham and of sausages which were sold at the famous shop of Borel, in the Rue Dauphine. In this one evening Daddy Cretaine, nicknamed Petit-Pain, exhausted eighteen editions of his cakes. All night long sounds of rejoicing broke out from the lodging houses, the windows of which were brilliantly lit up, and an atmosphere of revelry filled the district. The old festival of Christmas Eve was being celebrated.