Page:The Works of J. W. von Goethe, Volume 12.djvu/339

Rh your reverence surely knows, is easy of digestion." With good sense he took another pasty, thanking the princess for her attention just as if he had not seen through her malicious raillery. And so, also, some solid paste-work furnished her with occasion for venting her spite; for, as the monk helped himself to a piece, a second rolled off the dish toward his plate. "A third! your reverence: you seem anxious to lay a foundation." "When such excellent materials are furnished to his hand, the architect's labours are easy," rejoined his reverence. Thus she went on continually, only pausing awhile to keep her promise of pointing out to me the best dishes.

All this while I was conversing with my neighbour on the gravest topics. Absolutely, I never heard Filangieri utter an unmeaning sentence. In this respect, and indeed in many others, he resembles our worthy friend, George Schlosser; with this difference, that the former, as a Neapolitan and a man of the world, had a softer nature and an easier manner.

During the whole of this time my roguish neighbour allowed the clerical gentry not a moment's truce. Above all, the fish at this Lenten meal, dished up in imitation of flesh of all kinds, furnished her with inexhaustible opportunities for all manner of irreverent and ill-natured observations. Especially in justification and defence of a taste for flesh, she observed that people would have the form, to give a relish, even when the essence was prohibited.

Many more such jokes were noticed by me at the time, but I am not in the humour to repeat them. Jokes of this kind, when first spoken, and falling from beautiful lips, may be tolerable, not to say amusing; but, set down in black and white, they lose all charm,—for me at least. Then again, the boldly hazarded stroke of wit has this peculiarity, that, at the moment, it pleases us while it astonishes us by its boldness; but