“Not the whole gross of thousands yet, I trust? Faugh! what a greasy stench there would be—what a blazing of Jew jewelry! “Hand me the latest bluebook, with the reports.... “Ah, I see; great success! Power of the Lord Christ! (always you, of course). Society flourishing. Eighty-two thousand pounds four shillings and twopence three-farthings last year from Christians aroused to the claims of the lost sheep of the House of Israel. (Very good.) Five conversions!! Three others have already been persuaded to eat pork sausages. (Better and better.) One, who drank most fervently of the communion wine suffered himself to be treated to an oyster supper. Another, being greatly moved, was heard to ejaculate, ‘O, Christ!’... Hum, who are the five? Moses Isaacs: wasn’t he a Christian ten years ago in Italy, and afterwards a Mahommedan in Salonica, and afterwards a Jew in Marseilles? This Mussulman is your oyster-man, I presume? You will soon get the one hundred and forty-four thousand at this rate, my son! and cheap too!” He chuckled, and poured out another glass of Lachryma Christi; drank it, made a wry face, and then began coughing furiously. “Poor drink this for a god in his old age. Odin and Jupiter fared better. Though decent for a human tipple, for a divinity it is but _ambrosie stygiale_, as my dear old favorite chaplain would call it. I have his devotional works under lock and key there in my desk. _Apropos_, where is he? Left us again for a scurry through the more jovial regions? I have not seen him for a long time.” “My father! really, the words he used, the life he led; so corrupting for the young saints! We were forced to invite him to travel a little for the benefit of his health. The court _must_ be kept pure, you know.” “Send for him instantly, sir. He is out of favor because he likes the old man and laughs at your saints, because he can’t cant and loves to humbug the humbugs. Many a fit of the blues has he cured for me, while you only make them bluer. Have him fetched at once. O, I know you never liked him; you always thought him laughing at your sweet pale face and woebegone airs, laughing ‘_en horrible sarcasm et sanglante derision_’ (what a style the rogue has! what makes that of your favorite parsons and holy ones so flaccid and flabby and hectic?) ‘Physician, heal thyself!’ So, in plain words, you have banished him; the only jolly soul left amongst us, my pearl and diamond and red ruby of Chaplains, abstracter of the quintessence of pantagruelism! The words he used! I musn’t speak freely myself now, and the old books I wrote are a great deal too coarse for you Michael and Gabriel told me the other day that they had just been severely lectured on the earnestness of life by one of your new _protégés_; they had to kick him howling into limbo. A fine set of solemn prigs we are getting!” “My father, the holiness of sorrow, the infiniteness of suffering!” “Yes, yes, I know all about it. That