_Seb._ To think She would succeed in her absurd attempt, And fascinate by sinning, show herself Superior--guilt from its excess superior To innocence! That little peasant's voice Has righted all again. Though I be lost, I know which is the better, never fear, Of vice or virtue, purity or lust, Nature or trick! I see what I have done, Entirely now! Oh I am proud to feel Such torments--let the world take credit thence-- I, having done my deed, pay too its price! I hate, hate--curse you! God's in his heaven! _Otti._ --Me! Me! no, no, Sebald, not yourself--kill me! Mine is the whole crime. Do but kill me--then Yourself--then--presently--first hear me speak! I always meant to kill myself--wait, you! Lean on my breast--not as a breast; don't love me The more because you lean on me, my own Heart's Sebald! There, there, both deaths presently! _Seb._ My brain is drowned now--quite drowned: all I feel Is ... is, at swift-recurring intervals, A hurry-down within me, as of waters Loosened to smother up some ghastly pit: There they go--whirls from a black fiery sea! _Otti._ Not me--to him, O God, be merciful! _Talk by the way, while_ PIPPA _is passing from the hillside to Oreana. Foreign Students of painting and sculpture, from Venice, assembled opposite the house of_ JULES, _a young French statuary, at Passagno._ _1st Student._ Attention! My own post is beneath this window, but the pomegranate clump yonder will hide three or four of you with a little squeezing, and Schramm and his pipe must lie flat in the balcony. Four, five--who's a defaulter? We want everybody, for Jules must not be suffered to hurt his bride when the jest's found out. _2d Stud._ All here! Only our poet's away--never having much meant to be present, moonstrike him! The airs of that fellow, that Giovacchino! He was in violent love with himself, and had a fair prospect of thriving in his suit, so unmolested was it,--when suddenly a woman falls in love with him, too; and out of pure jealousy he takes himself off to Trieste, immortal poem and all: whereto is this prophetical epitaph appended already, as Bluphocks assures me,--"_Here a mammoth-poem lies, Fouled to death by butterflies._" His own fault, the simpleton! Instead of cramp couplets, each like a knife in your entrails, he should write, says Bluphocks, both classically and intelligibly.--_Æsculapius, an Epic. Catalogue of the drugs: Hebe's plaister--One strip Cools your lip. Phœbus' emulsion--One bottle Clears your throttle. Mercury's bolus--One box Cures ..._ _3d Stud._ Subside, my fine fellow! If the marriage was over by ten o'clock, Jules will certainly be here in a minute with his bride.