“Damnation!--_n’importe!_ My sweet Davenant, how could you---- Peregrine, my good fellow, do pull the bell! Horrible! Why, Cecil, how out of your wits you look! _Ave Maria! Vive la bagatelle!_ Why you look like a _diable_!--like a physician called in too late--_mort de ma vie!_--or like a--_monstre_!--like a wood demon at the English Opera House. Ring again, Courtenay! Ha, ha!--I played one myself once--_Oh! que c’est affreux!_--for a wager, ha, ha!--Oh!--with a long torch, ha, ha!--fire and brimstone!--with long black hair--_peste!_--but it would never stand on end like yours! _oh que non!_ Ring again, Courtenay!--_Eh! Perpignan!_ here has been a fall! a fall,--as they say upon ‘Change. _Cher Perpignan_: take me to bed, Perpignan; take it easy--_doucement!_ Ah! the wood demon, Davenant! I shall never get over it!--ha, ha!--Oh!----” And thus was Marmaduke carried off, laughing, and screaming, and jesting, and swearing, by turns. His medical attendant was summoned, and we saw him no more that night; he sent us word that he was as well as could be expected, but that he should never get over the wood demon, in spite of which consolatory intelligence Davenant wore a Tyburn countenance the whole evening. We met, however, the next morning, and proceeded most laudably to remember nothing of the accident but its absurdity. “I never found Voltaire heavy before,” said Villars, shaking Davenant by the hand; “but you poets of the Lake are so horribly in the habit of taking liberties with your own feet that you have no compassion at all for those of your friends. Mercy upon my five toes! they will not meet in a boot for a twelvemonth; and now, _àpropos de bottes_, we must have some breakfast.” Rain confined us to the house, the newspapers were full of advertisements, and the billiard-table was undergoing repair. Davenant endeavoured to define intensity, and I endeavoured to sleep; Marmaduke struck his sister’s tambourine, and the great clock struck one. We began to feel as uncomfortably idle as a gaol-bird who has just been put in, or a Minister who has just been turned out. At last some notice was taken of two miniatures of our friend and his sister, which had been done many years ago, and now hung on opposite sides of the mantelpiece, gazing tenderly at one another in all the holiday magnificence which was conferred by laced cap and pink ribbons upon the one, and by sky-blue jacket and sugar-loaf buttons upon the other. Hence we began to talk of painting, and of “Raphael, Correggio, and stuff,” until it was determined that we should proceed to make a pilgrimage through a long gallery of family portraits, which Marmaduke assured us had been covered with commendations and cobwebs ever since he left his cradle. He hobbled before us on his crutches, and made a very sufficient cicerone. Marmaduke has no wit; but he has a certain off-hand manner which often passes for it, and is sometimes as good a thing.