serious, he said:

"Elise, would you like--say--would you like, it would be very
nice of you, would you like to show this gentleman what it was?"

She turned eyes uneasily in all directions, then rose without saying a
word and took her position opposite him.

Then I witnessed an unheard-of thing.

They advanced and retreated with childlike grimaces, smiling, swinging
each other, bowing, skipping about like two automaton dolls moved by some
old mechanical contrivance, somewhat damaged, but made by a clever
workman according to the fashion of his time.

And I looked at them, my heart filled with extraordinary emotions, my
soul touched with an indescribable melancholy. I seemed to see before me
a pathetic and comical apparition, the out-of-date ghost of a former
century.

They suddenly stopped. They had finished all the figures of the dance.
For some seconds they stood opposite each other, smiling in an
astonishing manner. Then they fell on each other's necks sobbing.

I left for the provinces three days later. I never saw them again. When I
returned to Paris, two years later, the nursery had been destroyed. What
became of them, deprived of the dear garden of former days, with its
mazes, its odor of the past, and the graceful windings of its hedges?

Are they dead? Are they wandering among modern streets like hopeless