Page:Pippa Passes 1910.djvu/32

24 ''—One bottle Clears your throttle. Mercury’s bolus—One box Cures…''

3rd Student. Subside, my fine fellow! If the marriage was over by ten o’clock, Jules will certainly be here in a minute with his bride.

2nd Student. Good!—only, so should the poet’s muse have been universally acceptable, says Bluphocks, et canibus nostris … and Delia not better known to our literary dogs than the boy Giovacchino!

1st Student. To the point, now. Where ’s Gottlieb, the new-comer? Oh,—listen, Gottlieb, to what has called down this piece of friendly vengeance on Jules, of which we now assemble to witness the winding-up. We are all agreed, all in a tale, observe, when Jules shall burst out on us in a fury by and by: I am spokesman—the verses that are to undeceive Jules bear my name of Lutwyche—but each professes himself alike insulted by this strutting stone-squarer, who came alone from Paris to Munich, and thence with a crowd of us to Venice and Possagno here, but proceeds in a day or two alone again—oh, alone indubitably!—to Rome and Florence. He, forsooth, take up his portion with these dissolute, brutalized, heartless bunglers!—so he was heard to call us all: now, is Schramm brutalized, I should like to know? Am I heartless?

Gottlieb. Why, somewhat heartless; for, suppose Jules a coxcomb as much as you choose, still, for this mere coxcombry, you will have brushed off—what do folks style it?—the bloom of his life. Is it too late to alter? These love-letters now, you call his—I can’t laugh at them.

4th Student. Because you never read the sham letters of our inditing which drew forth these.