Page:Knight's Quarterly Magazine series 1 volume 3 (August–November 1824).djvu/464

 logy); Mr. Mule was haunted for some years by Anti-Mule in the person of the “young malefactor;” we ourselves, who communicate this excellent story, are not without our Anti-We; and Sylphs, as all the world is aware, have their counteracting Gnomes. One of these it must have been, scowling askance at youthful happiness, that now summoned an accursed wind from the South-east. Oh Miss Fanny! Miss Fanny! what are you thinking of that never look up to that same open window through which the wind is now pouring in with the current and the music of a Levanter. Oh! Mr. Ferdinand! what can you be thinking of, who seem unaware that any wind is abroad. One rose has fallen from the window already; by good luck, that fell outwards. Another we fear is destined to fall; and, considering the direction of the wind, it cannot but fall inwards. Thrice the flower-pot reeled; thrice the South wind heaved it from its basis; and thrice did some gentle power that honoureth true love, with a touch as delicate as the breathing of a sigh, turn the tremulous balance in favour of poor absent Fanny. But, when the fourth resounding blast butted with its horns against the rose-tree, and fate hung suspended as upon the edge of a razor,—then came the accursed gnome, gave it a kick on the windward quarter, and, in one instant, the shrub, with all its pottery, fell like Jove’s thunderbolt to the ground; crashed into a tempest of ruins on the wide area of the chamber-floor; and, spreading like a sea beneath Mrs. Tabitha’s bed, there forced much other pottery into the universal wreck.

Lyric poetry in the hands of Filicaja may,—prose from a bourgeois gentilhomme is absolutely impotent to, expound the frenzy of alarm which seized upon both the dragons. Extremity of panic tore away all the frail draperies of bed-clothes under which their terrors had hitherto lurked. Each shot upwards like a rocket or a pyramid of fire: each, with a heart that was beating audibly, stood bolt upright in bed: each had been stunned beneath the bed-clothes by the ruinous crash: each on shooting upwards came to hear the monsoon which was setting in through the window; and each had a momentary vision of its possible cause. True to their separate dreams, Mr. Mule conceived that ten thousand basilisks were coming down the chimney; Mrs. Tabitha conceived that ten thousand Turks, in search of ten thousand harems, were entering the window at the pas de charge. There was silence between the two dragons for three minutes. At length, upon a pause in the wind, Mr. Mule groaned out in a sepulchral tone, “What’s that?” In a tremulous whisper, between a whistle and a sob, Mrs. Tabitha replied, “God knows.” At this moment a long stream of air ran through the corridor, and burst in upon Mr. Mule’s bed hangings. Mr. Mule’s teeth chattered with alarm;