"You be shot!" replied the Iberian. "Was I not compelled to substitute some rational topic of conversation for your interminable harangue upon the symptoms of pulmonary complaint? It was enough to have emptied an hospital. But see! they are bringing in the horses. By Jove, how fresh Widdicomb looks! I wonder whether he was really master of the ring at Trajan's amphitheatre. Not a bad brute, that one striped like a Zebra. How on earth do they manage the colours?" "It is a chemical process," said the Doctor. "Perhaps you are not aware that the hyper-iodate of ----" "Oh yes! we know all about it: very queer stuff too, I daresay. Hallo--look here! what kind of character is this fellow intended to personify?" The question was not easily answered. The individual who provoked the remark was attired in most parsimonious silk drawers, with a sort of diminutive kilt around his waist. His head was decorated with a circle of particoloured feathers springing from a spangled circlet, not altogether unlike a highly decorated library-duster. On the whole, his costume was such as might have suited a Peruvian climate; but it was manifestly unfitted for the temperature of any untropical locality. By his side was a young lady similarly attired, only with a more liberal allowance of drapery, and rather more spangles upon her sleeves. The clown proceeded to chalk their soles with an expression of devout humility. "These, I presume," said the Doctor, consulting the playbill, "are intended to represent the Inca and his bride; though what Incas had to do with horses, is utterly beyond my comprehension." "They might have got them from the Spaniards, you know. Pizarro, is said to have been a liberal fellow in his way. I know a descendant of his at Cordova--" "There they go--now for it!" said the Doctor. "I wonder if people ever galloped across a prairie in that way, holding one another by the hands, and standing each upon the point of one particular toe?" "No more than Mercury ever chose to light upon the summit of a _jet d'eau_," said I. "But you are very prosaical and matter-of-fact to-night. See! up goes the lady on the Inca's knee. Do you call that attitude nothing? Why, even the master of the ring is so lost in admiration that he is forgetting to use his whip."