This was just as good a beginning as ever a sly man-catcher essayed in the world of love, since the days of Helen; and the arch kidnapper knew very well how to follow up her wile; for, after displaying, by a proper caper, as much of her ancle as would do the business, she skipped away, as nimbly as Nymphidia in the service of Oberon’s queen, and was not again seen till she opened the window of her mother’s house, and displayed herself, capless and coifless, to her staring admirer. The capture was now completed. Jove himself was never more completely entoiled by the chains of the little baggage Iynge; and, during the whole of that day, Gustavus strode along the pavement, opposite the window of his charmer, as if he had been on duty before a besieged city. He had just as little power to walk away as he had to circumscribe his step to the ordinary measure of God’s creatures; every stride occupying, at least, four feet of pavement, and being executed so regularly and methodically, that one step did not differ from another by a single inch. But it is a mere bagatelle to describe these pendulous movements, produced, for the first time, by the spirit of love; while, to execute with truth a faithful picture of the painful contortions of a countenance originally formed a wood-cut of extraordinary dimensions, and now under the soft, melting influence of the tenderest of passions, would require a goose-quill, owning no less an influence than the spirit of an immortal genius. As the loves of some of the inferior animals are expressed by sounds and signs that seem to indicate nothing but fierce war, so might the demonstrations of this extraordinary affair of the heart, exhibited through the grotesque motions of muscles that had been as rigid as dried leather for twenty years, be looked upon as anything rather than signs of the languishing passion which, as Augustin says, will make a musician out of an ass. Yet, doubtless, there was, both in his goggle-eyes and lengthened face, an expression that was intended for softness and languishment; and it is not impossible, that, if one had been apprized _a priori_ of the intention, he might have discovered in the ludicrous gesticulations some resemblance to at least a burlesque of what is only a very ridiculous exhibition at the very best.