And, forthwith disappearing, he returned in an instant with a marvellously ill-favoured old fiddle. Throwing a /penseroso/ air into his thin cheeks, our Don then began a few preliminary thrummings, which set my teeth on edge, and made Tarleton put both hands to his ears. Three sober-looking citizens, who had just sat themselves down to pipes and the journal, started to their feet like so many pieces of clockwork; but no sooner had Don Saltero, with a /degage/ air of graceful melancholy, actually launched into what he was pleased to term a tune, than a universal irritation of nerves seized the whole company. At the first overture, the three citizens swore and cursed, at the second division of the tune, they seized their hats, at the third they vanished. As for me, I found all my limbs twitching as if they were dancing to St. Vitus's music; the very drawers disappeared; the alligator itself twirled round, as if revivified by so harsh an experiment on the nervous system; and I verily believe the whole museum, bull, wings, Indian canoe, and Calmuc Tartar, would have been set into motion by this new Orpheus, had not Tarleton, in a paroxysm of rage, seized him by the tail of the coat, and whirled him round, fiddle and all, with such velocity that the poor musician lost his equilibrium, and falling against a row of Chinese monsters, brought the whole set to the ground, where he lay covered by the wrecks that accompanied his overthrow, screaming and struggling, and grasping his fiddle, which every now and then, touched involuntarily by his fingers, uttered a dismal squeak, as if sympathizing in the disaster it had caused, until the drawer ran in, and, raising the unhappy antiquarian, placed him on a great chair. "O Lord!" groaned Don Saltero, "O Lord! my monsters--my monsters--the pagoda--the mandarin, and the idol where are they?--broken--ruined-- annihilated!" "No, Sir; all safe, Sir," said the drawer, a smart, small, smug, pert man; "put 'em down in the bill, nevertheless, Sir. Is it Alderman Atkins, Sir, or Mr. Higgins?" "Pooh," said Tarleton, "bring me some lemonade; send the pagoda to the bricklayer, the mandarin to the surgeon, and the idol to the Papist over the way! There's a guinea to pay for their carriage. How are you, Don?" "Oh, Mr. Tarleton, Mr. Tarleton! how could you be so cruel?" "The nature of things demanded it, my good Don. Did I not call you a Chinese Adam? and how could you bear that name without undergoing the fall?" "Oh, Sir, this is no jesting matter,--broke the railing of my pagoda, bruised my arm, cracked my fiddle, and cut me off in the middle of that beautiful air!--no jesting matter."