“Mr. Slope was madly in love, but hardly knew it. The signora spitted him, as a boy does a cockchafer on a cork, that she might enjoy the energetic agony of his gyrations. And she knew very well what she was doing.” In their memorable interview the accomplished Phoedria led this poor Cymochles into a fearful, tangled web, there to struggle and flounder until she released him with mocking scorn, having illustrated perfectly Meredith’s remark about another and more famous egoist:[145] “A lover pretending too much by one foot’s length of pretense, will have that foot caught in her trap.” Even then, however, fate had not done her worst, for the cockchafer was literally to be slapped in the face by the more direct and active Eleanor Bold. The comment on this latter scene may be cited as an example of the mock-heroic vein occasionally used in the service of satire from Swift and Fielding on.[146] “But how shall I sing the divine wrath of Mr. Slope, or how invoke the tragic muse to describe the rage which swelled the celestial bosom of the bishop’s chaplain? Such an undertaking by no means befits the low-heeled buskin of modern fiction. The painter put a veil over Agamemnon’s face when called on to depict the father’s grief at the early doom of his devoted daughter. The god, when he resolved to punish the rebellious winds, abstained from mouthing empty threats. We will not attempt to tell with what mighty surgings of the inner heart Mr. Slope swore to revenge himself on the woman who had disgraced him, nor will we vainly strive to depict his deep agony of soul. “There he is, however, alone in the garden-walk, and we must contrive to bring him out of it. * * * He stood motionless, undecided, glaring with his eyes, thinking of the pains and penalties of Hades, and meditating how he might best devote his enemy to the infernal gods with all the passion of his accustomed eloquence. He longed in his heart to be preaching at her. ’Twas thus that he was ordinarily avenged of sinning mortal men and women. Could he at once have ascended his Sunday rostrum and fulminated at her such denunciations as his spirit delighted in, his bosom would have been greatly eased.”