Читать книгу Reveries of a Bachelor; or, A Book of the Heart онлайн

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But to be bored eternally about Divine Dante and funny Goldoni, is too bad. Your copy of Tasso, a treasure print of 1680, is all bethumbed and dog’s-eared, and spotted with baby gruel. Even your Seneca—an Elzevir—is all sweaty with handling. She adores La Fontaine, reads Balzac with a kind of artist-scowl, and will not let Greek alone.

You hint at broken rest and an aching head at breakfast, and she will fling you a scrap of anthology—in lieu of the camphor bottle—or chant the aἰaĩ aἰaĩ, of tragic chorus.

—The nurse is getting dinner; you are holding the baby; Peggy is reading Bruyère.

The fire smoked thick as pitch, and puffed out little clouds over the chimney place. I gave the fore-stick a kick, at the thought of Peggy, baby and Bruyère.

—Suddenly the flame flickered bluely athwart the smoke—caught at a twig below—rolled round the mossy oak-stick—twined among the crackling tree-limbs—mounted—lit up the whole body of smoke, and blazed out cheerily and bright. Doubt vanished with Smoke, and Hope began with Flame.