"Which," interrupted Vincenz, "has all the more of the real Spanish, or the true Italian smack about it, just because it ends with a tremendous cudgelling. No proper Novella of the kind would be complete without the due amount of licking, and I prize it highly as, medically speaking, a specially powerful stimulant, always employed by the best writers. In Boccacio things hardly ever wind up without cudgelling; and where does it rain more blows or thrusts than in the Romance of all Romances, 'Don Quixote?' Cervantes himself considered it necessary to apologise to his readers about it. Now-a-days intellectual ladies will have none of such matters in connection with the mental 'teas' (which they enjoy along with tea for the body); the honoured hide of a favourite poet--if he would retain his footing at 'teas,' and in pocket-books--must, at highest, be blackened by a tap or so on the nose, or the least little box on an ear. But what of tea? What of cultivated ladies? Behold in me, oh, Ottmar, your champion in complete armour, and cudgel soundly in all the novels you may be thinking of writing. I praise you for the cudgelling's sake." "And I," said Theodore, "for the delightful trio which Capuzzi, the Pyramid-doctor, and the somewhat shudder-creating little abortion, Pitichinaccio, form; and, moreover, for the wonderful way in which Salvator Rosa--who never appears as the hero of the tale, but always as an auxiliary--conforms to his character as it is described, and also as it appears in his own works." "Ottmar," said Sylvester, "has held chiefly to the adventurous and enterprising side of his character, and given us less of what was grave and gloomy in him. _A propos_ of this, I think of the famous sonnet in which, allegorising on his own name--Salvator--he utters his deep indignation at his enemies and persecutors who accused him of plundering from older writers in his poetry, which, indeed, is all ruggedness, and deficient in interior connectedness." "But," said Lothair, "to return to Ottmar's Novella. The principal fault which I have to find with it is that, instead of a story rounding itself into a whole in all its parts, he has merely given us a series of pictures, although they are often delightful enough." "Can I do otherwise than fully agree with you?" said Ottmar. "Still, you will all admit that it requires very skilful navigation to keep clear of the rocks upon which I have run."