Then the courier bowed gallantly, and said, “Bonne chance!” and went trotting down the Grande Rue on his way to the Tuileries, and the wedding guests began to sing: they sang a song beginning—
“Il était un petit navire, Qui n’avait jamais navigué….”
I had quite forgotten it, and listened till the end, and thought it very pretty; and was interested in a dull, mechanical way at discovering that it must be the original of Thackeray’s famous ballad of “Little Billee,” which I did not hear till many years after. When they came to the last verse—
“Si cette histoire vous embête, Nous allons la recommencer,”
I went on my way. This was my last walk in dreamland, perhaps, and dream-hours are uncertain, and I would make the most of them, and look about me.
I walked towards Ranelagh, a kind of ca
