"How much do you ask?"
"Well, I could not possibly let you have it for any less than five hundred francs."
"I have not that much with me now. I will get it and be back in an hour."
I returned with the money, but the tapestry was no longer there. An Englishman had bargained for it during my absence, offered six hundred francs for it, and taken it away with him.
After all, perhaps it was best that it should have been thus, and that I should preserve this delicious souvenir intact. They say one should never return to a first love, or look at the rose which one admired the evening before.
And then I am no longer so young or so pretty that tapestries should come down from their walls to honor me.