Should not I find the charm still there? Is love, to me, with things that were? Translations of the fable were familiar enough in Britain but the subject of male bonding left some readers uneasy (as it very obviously did Elizur Wright). Eventually there appeared an 18th-century version in octosyllabic couplets that claimed to be ‘improved from Fontaine’. Here the couple are a male and female named Columbo and Turturella. Apart from this, the only real difference is that, in place of an authorial narration, Columbo relates his misadventures to Turturella after his return and she draws the moral ‘Ere misfortunes teach, be wise’. The new version, also titled "The Two Doves", has been attributed to John Hawkesworth, one of the editors of The Gentleman's Magazine in which it first appeared (July 1748, p 326). Unascribed there, it remained so when reprinted in Thomas Bewick’s Select Fables of Aesop and others (1818). The change in gender was replicated when the fable was later made the subject of a Parisian ballet. By that time the French were already disposed to interpret it in this way. Gustave Doré, who often transposes the fables into equivalent human situations, did so in his 1868 illustration of "The Two Pigeons". This pictures a couple in 17th century dress, the woman hanging onto the departing gallant's hand and leaning towards him with concern in her eyes. Ballets André Messager based a ballet on La Fontaine's fable under the title Les Deux Pigeons. This was first performed in three acts at the Paris Opéra in the autumn of 1886 with choreography by Louis Mérante, libretto by Mérante and Henri de Régnier. In the original scenario, set in 18th century Thessaly, the hero Pépio (danced then by a woman) is discontented with life at home and with the company of his fiancée Gourouli. Their uneasy relationship is symbolised by the pas de deux the two lovers perform at the start in imitation of two pigeons they have been observing, quarreling with small irritated movements of the head and then coming together to make up. When a group of gypsies visit their village, Pépio is seduced by the energetic czardas that they dance and flirts with the dusky Djali, eventually leaving his love behind to join in their wanderings. Gourouli's grandmother advises her to follow him disguised as a gypsy. Arriving at their camp, she makes all the men