It was Rosalind herself, so fair and radiant that she lighted up the whole room,--with the strings of pearls in her hair, her prismatic dress, her ample lace sleeves, her red-heeled shoes, her lovely peacock's-feather fan,--in a word, just as she was on the day of the play. But there was this important and decisive difference, that she had neither neckerchief nor wimple nor ruff nor anything at all to conceal from his eyes those two charming hostile twin brothers,--who, alas! are only too often inclined to be reconciled. A breast entirely bare, as white and transparent as antique marble, of the purest and most exquisite form, protruded boldly from a very scanty corsage and seemed to challenge kisses. It was a very reassuring sight; and D'Albert was quickly reassured, and gave way in all confidence to his wildest emotions. "Well, Orlando, do you not recognize your Rosalind?" said the fair one, with the most charming smile; "or have you left your love hanging with your sonnets on the bushes in the forest of Arden? Are you really cured of the disease for which you asked me so persistently for a remedy? I am very much afraid so." "Oh, no! Rosalind, I am sicker than ever. I am in the death-agony; I am dead, or nearly so." "You look very well for a corpse, and many living men have not so good a color as you." "What a week I have passed!--You can't imagine it, Rosalind. I hope that it will be worth at least a thousand years of purgatory to me in the other world.--But, if I may venture to ask you, why did you not answer sooner?" "Why?--I am not quite sure, unless it was just because.--If that reason doesn't strike you as satisfactory, here are three others not so good; you can take your choice: first, because, in the excitement of your passion, you forgot to write legibly and it took me more than a week to guess what your letter was about;--secondly, because my modesty could not accustom itself in less time to the ridiculous idea of taking a dithyrambic poet for a lover; and thirdly, because I was not sorry to find out if you would blow out your brains, poison yourself with opium, or hang yourself with your garter.--There you are." "You wicked jester!--You did well to come to-day, I assure you, for you might not have found me to-morrow." "Really! poor boy!--Don't put on such a disconsolate expression, for I shall be touched too, and that would make me stupider in my single person than all the animals that were in the ark with the late Noah.--If I once open the flood-gates of my sentimentality, you will be submerged, I warn you.--Just now I gave you three bad reasons, I offer you now three good kisses; will you accept, on condition that you are to forget the reasons for the kisses?--I owe you that much, and more."