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254 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1854
…c'étaient les deux moitiés d'un seul amour. L'une était l'idéal sublime, l'autre la douce réalité.
(They were two halves of a single love. One was the sublime ideal, the other the sweet reality.)
And Sylvie had already unfastened her calico dress and let it fall to her feet. The old aunt's dress fitted perfectly around Sylvie's slim waist; she told me to do her up. ‘Oh! What funny flat sleeves,’ she said. And yet the sleeves, decorated with lace, showed off her bare arms admirably, her neckline framed by the high bodice with yellowing tulle and faded ribbons that had only barely tightened around the vanished charms of her aunt. ‘Get on with it! Don't know you how to fasten a dress?’ Sylvie was saying.
It so happened that a little while later, one fine December evening, Toffel saddled his dapple-gray stallion and, at a steady trot, climbed the winding paths that still today lead from Toffelsville to the high country, across the Ohio mountains.
Je suis le ténébreux,—le veuf,—l'inconsolé,
Le prince d'Aquitaine à la tour abolie :
Ma seule étoile est morte,—et mon luth constellé
Porte le Soleil Noir de la Mélancolie.
(I am shadowed, and widowed, and unconsoled – the Aquitainian Prince in his Ruined Tower. My lone star is dead, and my spangled lute bears the Black Sun of Melancholy.)