He wished for no
appetite--could contrive no base and vulgar appetite for food, whilst his
soul, he swore, was being consumed by the overwhelming, all-effacing
appetite to behold her.
Such meandering fools are most of us at nineteen, when the heart is young--
a flawless mirror ready to hold the image of the first fair maid that looks
into it through our eyes, and as ready--Heaven knows!--to relinquish it
when the substance is withdrawn.
But I, who was not nineteen, and the mirror of whose heart--to pursue my
metaphor--was dulled, warped, and cracked with much illusage, grew sick of
the boy's enthusiasm and the monotony of a conversation which I could
divert into no other channel from that upon which it had been started by a
little slip of a girl with hair of gold and sapphire eyes--I use Andrea's
words. And so I rose, and bidding him take root in the tavern, if so it
pleased his fancy, I left him there.
Wrapped in my cloak, for the air was raw and damp, I strode aimlessly
along, revolving in my mind what had befallen at the Conn?table that
morning, and speculating upon the issue that this quaint affair might have.
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