CULCH. I really can't allow you to lecture me. I am not insensible to my good-fortune--if others are. Now we'll drop the subject. PODB. I'm willing enough to drop it. And I shall turn in now--it's late. You coming? CULCH. Not yet. Good-night. (_To himself, as_ PODBURY _departs_.) You tasteless _dolt_! PODB. Good-night! (_To himself, as he swings off._) Confounded patronizing _prig_! CHAPTER XXIII. +PEARLS AND PIGS.+ SCENE--_The Lower Hall of the Scuola di San Rocco, Venice. British Tourists discovered studying the Tintorets on the walls and ceiling by the aid of Ruskin, Hare, and Baedeker, from which they read aloud, instructively, to one another._ MISS PRENDERGAST _has brought "The Stones of Venice" for the benefit of her brother and_ PODBURY. _Long self-repression has reduced_ PODBURY _to that unpleasantly hysterical condition known as "a fit of the giggles," which, however, has hitherto escaped detection_. MISS P. (_standing opposite "The Flight into Egypt" reading_). "One of the principal figures here is the Donkey." Where _is_ Mr. Podbury? [_To_ P., _who reappears, humbly proffering a tin focussing-case_.] Thanks, but you need not have troubled! "The Donkey ... um--um--never seen--um--um--any of the nobler animals so sublime as this quiet head of the domestic ass"--(_here_ BOB _digs_ PODBURY _in the ribs behind_ MISS P.'S _back_)--"chiefly owing to the grand motion in the nostril, and writhing in the ears." (_A spasmodic choke from_ PODBURY.) May I ask what you find so amusing? PODB. (_crimson_). I--I _beg_ your pardon--I don't know _what_ I was laughing at exactly. (_Aside to_ BOB.) _Will_ you shut up, confound you! A STOUT LADY (_close by, reading from Hare_). "The whole symmetry of it depending on a narrow line of light." (_Dubiously, to her Daughter._) I don't _quite_--oh yes, I do now--that's it--where my sunshade is--"the edge of a carpenter's square, which connects those unused tools" ... h'm--can _you_ make out the "unused tools," Ethel? _I_ can't.... But he says--"The Ruined House is the Jewish Dispensation." Now I should never have found _that_ out for myself. (_They pass to another canvas._) "Tintoret denies himself all aid from the features.... No time allowed for watching the expression."... (That reminds me--what _is_ the time by your bracelet, darling?) "No blood, no stabbing, or cutting ... but an awful substitute for these in the chiaroscuro." (Ah, yes, indeed! Do you see it, love?--in the right-hand corner.) "So that our eyes "--(_comfortably_)--"seem to become blood-shot, and strained with strange horror, and deadly vision." (Not one o'clock, _really_?--and we've to meet Papa outside Florian's for lunch at one-thirty! Dear me, we mustn't stay too long over this room.)