“How d’ye do, Mr. St. John,” said he,--“how d’ye do?--Pretty sort of a day we’ve had. Lucky to find you at home,--that is to say if you will give me some broiled oysters and champagne for supper.” “With all my heart, Doctor,” said St. John, changing his manner at once from the pensive to an easy and somewhat brusque familiarity,--“with all my heart; but I am glad to hear you are a convert to champagne: you spent a whole evening last week in endeavouring to dissuade me from the sparkling sin.” “Pish! I had suffered the day before from it; so, like a true Old Bailey penitent, I preached up conversion to others, not from a desire of their welfare, but a plaguy sore feeling for my own misfortune. Where did you dine to-day? At home! Oh! the devil! I starved on three courses at the Duke of Ormond’s.” “Aha! Honest Matt was there?” “Yes, to my cost. He borrowed a shilling of me for a chair. Hang this weather, it costs me seven shillings a day for coach-fare, besides my paying the fares of all my poor brother parsons, who come over from Ireland to solicit my patronage for a bishopric, and end by borrowing half-a-crown in the meanwhile. But Matt Prior will pay me again, I suppose, out of the public money?” “To be sure, if Chloe does not ruin him first.” “Hang the slut: don’t talk of her. How Prior rails against his place!* He says the excise spoils his wit, and that the only rhymes he ever dreams of now-a-days are ‘docket and cocket.’” * In the Customs. “Ha, ha! we must do something better for Matt,--make him a bishop or an ambassador. But pardon me, Count, I have not yet made known to you the most courted, authoritative, impertinent, clever, independent, haughty, delightful, troublesome parson of the age: do homage to Dr. Swift. Doctor, be merciful to my particular friend, Count Devereux.”