As he rapped vigorously, the door was partly opened, and a young man, simply clad in a shirt and an eye-glass, presented himself. "I cannot receive you," said he to Rodolphe. "Why not?" asked the latter. "There," said Marcel, pointing to a feminine head that had just peeped out from behind a curtain, "there is my answer." "It is not a pretty one," said Rodolphe, who had just had the door closed in his face. "Ah!" said he to himself when he got into the street, "what shall I do? Suppose I call on Colline, we could pass the time in abusing Marcel." Passing along the Rue de l'Ouest, usually dark and unfrequented, Rodolphe made out a shade walking up and down in melancholy fashion, and muttering in rhyme. "Ho, ho!" said Rodolphe, "who is this animated sonnet loitering here? What, Colline!" "What Rodolphe! Where are you going?" "To your place." "You won't find me there." "What are you doing here?" "Waiting." "What are you waiting for?" "Ah!" said Colline in a tone of raillery, "what can one be waiting for when one is twenty, when there are stars in the sky and songs in the air?" "Speak in prose." "I am waiting for a girl." "Good night," said Rodolphe, who went on his way continuing his monologue. "What," said he, "is it St. Cupid's Day and cannot I take a step without running up against people in love? It is scandalously immoral. What are the police about?" As the gardens of the Luxembourg were still open, Rodolphe passed into them to shorten his road. Amidst the deserted paths he often saw flitting before him, as though disturbed by his footsteps, couples mysteriously interlaced, and seeking, as a poet has remarked, the two-fold luxury of silence and shade. "This," said Rodolphe, "is an evening borrowed from a romance." And yet overcome, despite himself, by a langourous charm, he sat down on a seat and gazed sentimentally at the moon. In a short time he was wholly under the spell of a feverish hallucination. It seemed to him that the gods and heroes in marble who peopled the garden were quitting their pedestals to make love to the goddesses and heroines, their neighbors, and he distinctly heard the great Hercules recite a madrigal to the Vedella, whose tunic appeared to him to have grown singularly short. From the seat he occupied he saw the swan of the fountain making its way towards a nymph of the vicinity. "Good," thought Rodolphe, who accepted all this mythology, "There is Jupiter going to keep an appointment with Leda; provided always that the park keeper does not surprise them." Then he leaned his forehead on his hand and plunged further into the flowery thickets of sentiment. But at this sweet moment of his dream Rodolphe was suddenly awakened by a park keeper, who came up and tapped him on the shoulder. "It is closing time, sir," said he.