O Favourite, thou hast Ionian lips.
There was a Greek painter named Euphorion, who was surnamed the painter of the lips.
That Greek alone would have been worthy to paint thy mouth.
Listen! before thee, there was never a creature worthy of the name.
Thou wert made to receive the apple like Venus, or to eat it like Eve; beauty begins with thee.I have just referred to Eve; it is thou who hast created her.Thou deservest the letters-patent of the beautiful woman.
O Favourite, I cease to address you as `thou,' because I pass from poetry to prose.You were speaking of my name a little while ago.
That touched me; but let us, whoever we may be, distrust names.
They may delude us.I am called Felix, and I am not happy.
Words are liars.
Let us not blindly accept the indications which they afford us.
It would be a mistake to write to Liege[2] for corks, and to Pau for gloves.Miss Dahlia, were I in your place, I would call myself Rosa.A flower should smell sweet, and woman should have wit.
I say nothing of Fantine; she is a dreamer, a musing, thoughtful, pensive person; she is a phantom possessed of the form of a nymph and the modesty of a nun, who has strayed into the life of a grisette, but who takes refuge in illusions, and who sings and prays and gazes into the azure without very well knowing what she sees or what she is doing, and who, with her eyes fixed on heaven, wanders in a garden where there are more birds than are in existence.
O Fantine, know this:I, Tholomyes, I am all illusion; but she does not even hear me, that blond maid of Chimeras! as for the rest, everything about her is freshness, suavity, youth, sweet morning light.
O Fantine, maid worthy of being called Marguerite or Pearl, you are a woman from the beauteous Orient.
Ladies, a second piece of advice:do not marry; marriage is a graft; it takes well or ill; avoid that risk.
But bah! what am I saying?
I am wasting my words.Girls are incurable on the subject of marriage, and all that we wise men can say will not prevent the waistcoat-makers and the shoe-stitchers from dreaming of husbands studded with diamonds.Well, so be it; but, my beauties, remember this, you eat too much sugar.You have but one fault, O woman, and that is nibbling sugar.O nibbling sex, your pretty little white teeth adore sugar.Now, heed me well, sugar is a salt.
All salts are withering.Sugar is the most desiccating of all salts; it sucks the liquids of the blood through the veins; hence the coagulation, and then the solidification of the blood; hence tubercles in the lungs, hence death.That is why diabetes borders on consumption.
Then, do not crunch sugar, and you will live.
I turn to the men: