Scythe takes a glance at them through his glass.
Ninon.
Très beau! Good Monsieur Rainbow, ze frog is ze great beau in ze springtime, with his fine green coat and gold buttons.
Bluegrass.
Now I remember me, the frog has a gallant look when the spring is in the meadows and the banks are grassy. Now I remember me more closely, he also has a romantic look; for once, when a boy, I watched him sitting, like a sybarite Turk, upon a dewy bank in the pale moonlight, enjoying the downward fragrance of an o’erbending lily, which o’er him hung like a wedding bell. He gazed upon the moon sailing above him, and then upon the moon below him, glistening in the pond which was his bed,—Neptune’s trundle-bed, made for frogs,—until, between these two perplexities of light, his eyes like diamonds shone. Shall I halt here?
Scythe looks at the earth and moon alternately with his glass.
Ninon.
No, no, dear Monsieur; go on, good Monsieur Rainbow. I have ze grand interest. His eyes shone like ze diamonds, ze beautiful diamonds. Superbe!
Bluegrass.
Well, his eyes, like twin solitaires encrusted in rims of red gold, shone more translucently than any that e’er sparkled in the betrothal ring of an expectant bride. It seems this gentleman in green had grown fixedly practical between the real moon and the ideal moon, and would not have an ideal when he had not the real; for he, poor frog, like some of our practical humans, did not know that the ideal moon in a pond was much finer than a pond in the real moon. Now do I see him, as plainly as if it were to-night, there coolly sitting and meditating, quite philosophical.