Pierrette set out for town one morning with a pot of milk upon her cushioned head. She wore a simple skirt and low-heeled shoes, and walked with springy step. Already in her mind she paid the price of milk towards a hundred eggs—which would, she thought, with care and diligence, produce a triple brood.
“The chickens I can raise beside the house,” she mused. “The cleverest of foxes still must leave enough to buy a pig with; pork grows fat on just a little bran; with what I’ll sell it for, I’ll easily afford a cow and calf; the calf—just think!—will frisk and frolic with the sheep . . . !”
And thereupon Pierrette frisked too, and dropped the milk.
Goodbye to calf and cow, to pig, to chickens, chicks, eggs, all!
She left her fortune spilled upon the road, and homeward dragged her heavy feet. Her husband surely would rebuke her.
I cannot: for I do just the same. I dream awake, transported by beguiling phasms: I challenge and dethrone a sultan most redoubtable; I take his place; I’m loved and feared; there falls a rain of diadems upon my head; and my seraglio waits . . . —Then something calls me back, and I’m just me again.
We all build castles in the air, and sell the skin before we’ve caught the bear.