If you want to civilize a man, begin with his grandmother.

Now, one cannot read nonsense with impunity.

You are adorable, mademoiselle. I study your feet with the microscope and your soul with the telescope.

Not ill? No truly, I am young, healthful, and strong; the blood flows freely in my veins; my limbs obey my will; I am robust in mind and body, constituted for a long life. Yes, all this is true; and yet, nevertheless, I have an illness, a fatal illness,-an illness given by the hand of man!

A translation in verse . . . seems to me something absurd, impossible.

How did it happen that their lips came together? How does it happen that birds sing, that snow melts, that the rose unfolds, that the dawn whitens behind the stark shapes of trees on the quivering summit of the hill? A kiss, and all was said.

She might have melted a heart of stone, but nothing can melt a heart of wood.