_Yorick_, I said, picked up the chesnut which _Phutatorius’s_ wrath had flung down----the action was trifling ----I am ashamed to account for it--he did it, for no reason, but that he thought the chesnut not a jot worse for the adventure--and that he held a good chesnut worth stooping for. ------But this incident, trifling as it was, wrought differently in _Phutatorius’s_ head: He considered this act of _Yorick’s_ in getting off his chair and picking up the chesnut, as a plain acknowledgment in him, that the chesnut was originally his--and in course, that it must have been the owner of the chesnut, and no one else, who could have played him such a prank with it: What greatly confirmed him in this opinion, was this, that the table being parallelogramical and very narrow, it afforded a fair opportunity for _Yorick_, who sat directly over against _Phutatorius_, of slipping the chesnut in----and consequently that he did it. The look of something more than suspicion, which _Phutatorius_ cast full upon _Yorick_ as these thoughts arose, too evidently spoke his opinion----and as _Phutatorius_ was naturally supposed to know more of the matter than any person besides, his opinion at once became the general one; ----and for a reason very different from any which have been yet given----in a little time it was put out of all manner of dispute. When great or unexpected events fall out upon the stage of this sublunary world----the mind of man, which is an inquisitive kind of substance, naturally takes a flight behind the scenes to see what is the cause and first spring of them. --The search was not long in this instance. It was well known that _Yorick_ had never a good opinion of the treatise which _Phutatorius_ had wrote _de Concubinis retinendis_, as a thing which he feared had done hurt in the world----and ’twas easily found out, that there was a mystical meaning in _Yorick’s_ prank--and that his chucking the chesnut hot into _Phutatorius’s_ ***----*****, was a sarcastical fling at his book--the doctrines of which, they said, had enflamed many an honest man in the same place. This conceit awaken’d _Somnolentus_----made _Agelastes_ smile----and if you can recollect the precise look and air of a man’s face intent in finding out a riddle------it threw _Gastripheres’s_ into that form--and in short was thought by many to be a master-stroke of arch-wit.