"Yes, portentously!" "I think you are mistaken." "No!" "I never sigh." And the melancholy Jacques uttered a sigh which was enough to shatter all his bulk. The consequence was that Sir Asinus burst into a second roar of laughter louder than before, and said: "Come, my dear Jacques, unbosom! You have been to see----" "Belle-bouche--Belle-bouche: but I am not in love with her." "Oh no--of course not," said his friend, laughing ironically. Jacques sighed. "She don't like me," he said forlornly. "She's very fond of me though," said his friend. "Only yesterday--but I am mad to be talking about it." With which words Sir Asinus turned away his head to hide his mischievous and triumphant smile. Poor Jacques looked more forlorn than ever; which circumstance seemed to afford his friend extreme delight. "Why not pay your addresses to Philippa, Jacques my boy?" he said satirically; "there's no chance for you with Belle-bouche, as you call her." "Philippa? No, no!" sighed Jacques; "she's too brilliant." "For you?" "Even for me--me, the prince of wits, and coryphaeus of coxcombs: yes, yes!" And the melancholy Jacques sighed again, and looked around him with the air of a man whose last hope on earth has left him. His friend chokes down a laugh; and stretching himself in the bright spring sunshine pouring through the window, says with a smile: "Come, make a clean breast of it, old fellow. You were there to-day?" "Yes, yes." "Have a pleasant time?" "Can't say I did." "Were there any visitors?" "A dozen--you understand the description of visitors." "No; what sort?" "Fops in embryo, and aspirants after wit-laurels." "It is well you went--they must have been thrown in the shade. For you, my dear Jacques, are undeniably the most perfect fop, and the greatest wit--in your own opinion--of this pleasant village of Devilsburg." "No, no," replied his companion with well-affected modesty; "I a fop! I a pretender to wit? No, no, my dear Sir Asinus, you do me injustice: I am the simplest of mortals, and a very child of innocence. But I was speaking of Shadynook and the fairies of that domain. Never have I seen Belinda, or rather Belle-bouche, so lovely, and I here disdainfully repel your ridiculous calumny that she's in love with you, you great lump of presumption and overweening self-conceit! Philippa too was a pastoral queen--in silk and jewels--and around them they had gathered together a troop of shepherds from the adjoining grammar-school, called William and Mary College, of which I am an aspiring bachelor, and you were an ornament before your religious opinions caught from Fauquier drove you away like a truant school-boy. The shepherds were as usual very ridiculous, and I had no opportunity to whisper so much as a single word into my dear Belle-bouche's ear. Ah! how lovely she looked! By heaven, I'll go to-morrow and request her to designate some form of death for me to die--all for her sake!"