It is rather a ridiculous business, I allow; yet you will smile at it
tenderly, rather than scornfully, if you remember that it shows how
closely linked we human creatures are, without knowing it, and that
more hearts than we dream of enjoy our happiness and share our sorrow.
Thus, I dine at great tables uninvited, and, unknown, converse with
the famous beauties. If Aurelia is at last engaged, (but who is
worthy?) she will, with even greater care, arrange that wondrous
toilette, will teach that lace a fall more alluring, those gems a
sweeter light. But even then, as she rolls to dinner in her carriage,
glad that she is fair, not for her own sake nor for the world's, but
for that of a single youth (who, I hope, has not been smoking at the
club all the morning), I, sauntering upon the sidewalk, see her pass,
I pay homage to her beauty, and her lover can do no more; and if,
perchance, my garments--which must seem quaint to her, with their
shining knees and carefully brushed elbows; my white cravat, careless,
yet prim; my meditative movement, as I put my stick under my arm to
pare an apple, and not, I hope, this time to fall into the
street,--should remind her, in her spring of youth, and beauty, and
love, that there are age, and care, and poverty, also; then, perhaps,
the good fortune of the meeting is not wholly mine.
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