Drink, my gallants; reel and rhyme Though our souls are second-rate We are none the less sublime: Drink, and give the lie to fate! Silenus. I know another song like that; but if drunkenness is no excuse for plagiarism, what is? [Silenus, Satyrs, and Bacchantes go out. Enter Scaramouch. Harlequin. Welcome, great chief! Columbine. Hail, noble champion! Scaramouch. How d'ye do? How d'ye do? Have you secured our venerable Bacchanalian friend? Harlequin. We have. Scaramouch. Where is he? Now, don't tell me he's in your pocket. I'm not yet better of that fairy you caught me. Harlequin. Was she not a success? Scaramouch. O Harlequin! O Columbine! I had her advertised on posters as big as mainsails. I paid municipalities fortunes to permit policemen to be my sandwich-men. Harlequin. And a very good use to put them to. Scaramouch. Now don't: I can't stand it. Listen: I offered a prize of a thousand guineas to whoever would make a new joke about policemen, introducing my fairy. Twenty-one thousand jokes were sent in: I read these jokes. Harlequin. Heroic soul! Scaramouch. Nay, I am better. Do not flatter me.--Well, I published an hourly bulletin of the fairy's progress to the capital, with gratis supplements of original novels by the chief living writers. I hired and shut up six theatres, and bought the Crystal Palace to exhibit her in. Age of glass and iron! there came a thing about the size of a small tadpole! Harlequin. Well, I never said she was a giantess. Scaramouch. No; but my bills had her as big as a ballet-girl. The crowd--there was a crowd the first and only night--couldn't see it; so they wrecked the Palace and went off in a body to the performing fleas, and a stray cat ate the fairy. Now, how big is Bacchus? Harlequin. Too big for a cat to eat: in fact, I don't believe any cat in Christendom, even Whittington's, which bearded a king, would dare to look at him. I only saw him once, and I've no desire to see him again. He withered me, sir, with a look: I am limp still. Scaramouch. Paper, pens, and ink! I thought you said you had him? Harlequin. No, sir; we have only got his venerable Bacchanalian friend. Scaramouch. People and pantomimes! what am I to do! Harlequin. Ship Silenus instead. Why, even supposing we could get hold of Bacchus, he would be of no use for our purpose. Columbine. He would be a worse bargain than the fairy, unless you passed him off for Ariadne. Scaramouch. In the name of the living tinker, how? Harlequin. Because not a soul would believe that the big beardless boy which Bacchus looks was he. Now, this old wine-skin, Silenus, is just the idea your worthy patrons have of what Bacchus must be after a supposed debauch extending from end to end of the Christian era. Scaramouch. And is he willing to play Bacchus? Harlequin. As willing as a grub is in May to be a butterfly.