Little Poems in Prose

XI THE WILD WOMAN AND THE SPOILT DARLING “REALLY, my dear, you tire me without measure or pity! One would say, to hear you sigh, that you suffered more than sixty-year- old gleaners, or the old beggar women who pick up broken crusts at the doors of dirty inns. “If at least your sighs expressed remorse, they would do you some honour; but they only interpret your satiety of well-being, and that you are overwhelmed with rest; and then, you go on for ever spreading yourself in vain words: “Love me well; I have so much need of it; console me here, caress me there.” Come, I will try to cure you; we shall perhaps find the means for a brace of half-pence in the middle of a festival. “Let us consider carefully, I beg you, this solid cage of iron. Within it, howling like a lost soul, shaking the bars like an orang-outang made furious by captivity, imitating—and how perfectly!—now the tiger’s circular leaps, now