And seems all rumpled up and soiled.
’Tis like my aunt’s Muff, all agape,
Quite out of countenance and shape!
Now warm yourself!
Simon, good sir, ensconce yourself!
I’ll lend you, sir, my bran-new Muff!
My dear!
I’ll lend you, sir, my bran-new Muff!
What laughter, what shouts, what chokings, in those parties à la Paul de Kock, when an artless maiden—at the time when pleasant digestion had set its bloom on all faces—sang, one by one, these ancient couplets, with an air at once of a whimpering girl and of a woman full of coquettish intelligence.
The Muff has not always brought tears of laughter to the eyes, and a physiologist might draw from it many a curious deduction; only to cite a single instance, in the middle of the Scènes de la Vie de Bohème, in the episode of Francine’s Muff, which should remain in every reader’s memory—the tears come into all our eyes resultant from an emotion at once sincere and profound.