“‘_Oui, certainement._ The _old lady_ you mean. _Malateste!_ It makes me laugh--_pardonez moi, monsieur_, but I can’t help it--it makes me laugh to think about her, _ma foi_! What a queer old lady it was, to be sure! Such a little pinched-up face; and what a nose and chin, look you! Ecod! it was for all the world _la casse-noix_--a regular pair of nut-crackers! Certes, I took her to be the grandmother of Methusalah, or sister to Adam’s first wife. Oh, ho, ho--he, ha, _peste_! I shall die o’ laughing! And then _such_ a dress! Not a single article of cloth about her, but all she wore made of thin green-and-blue morocco; and then such dainty slippers, looking for all the world as if made of the wings of _Pappilon_! and such a head-dress--withered flowers, and two bushels of faded ribbon! _Par le grande Dieu_, the lady _was_ a queer one!’ and Pierre went back to his corner, laughing as if he would explode. “The gardener looked astonished beyond all measure. How _I_ looked cannot be told; but how I _felt_, no mortal pen could possibly describe. We both kept silent, and advanced to where Madame _la Jardinière_ stood, patiently waiting her turn to be questioned, and impatiently wondering what was the matter with Pierre, the fellow laughed so uproariously, and enjoyed ‘the feast of memory’ with such a decided gusto. “‘_Ma chere femme_,’ said my comrade, ‘will you please be so good as to describe the person whom you admitted here to-day along with monsieur? Certes, I believe the Devil himself is at the bottom of the business, for no two persons are agreed in description. But you, my darling, _you_, who are all the while reading poetry books;--all about Vido (Ovid?), and Virgil, and Spearshaker, and all those great people--you can describe this person perfectly; can’t you, my sweet?’ and the gardener looked imploringly at his plump and buxom _compagnon de lit_. “Now, of all mortals it is most unsafe and dangerous to flatter a French woman, and madame was French all the way through; consequently she determined, on so fitting an occasion, to prove her husband’s encomiums perfectly well founded; and she began the display with a quotation from the Bard of Avon’s Midsummer Night’s Dream. “‘_Ah, mon ange avec les bottes_--my angel in boots--do you not know that Joseph has been a poet ever since I instructed him in trochees, dactyls, spondees, dythyrambics, hexameters, iambics, acatalectics, and--anapests--and’---- “‘Oh, may the devil fly away with all of your Anna cats, or Mary cats!--damn all cats! And as for your Anna Pests--why, what’s she got to do with Joseph? Is she another grisette the fellow’s running after? Why, that’s fifteen different women in fifteen weeks. I can’t see how the fellow’s constitution stands it: and then _you’ve_ done the introducing business? Shame on you--you ought to be’----