CHAPTER X.
THE SUBJECT OF WHICH IS INEXHAUSTIBLE.
"Run your eyes over the city, and as we discover subjects worthy of being placed in this museum, I will describe them to you. There is one, already; I must not let him escape: he is a newly-married man. It is just a week since, in consequence of reports which reached his ears relative to the coquetries of a damsel whom he affected, he went in a fury to her house, broke one portion of her furniture, threw the other out of windows, and on the next day mended the matter by espousing her." "A proper candidate, indeed," said Zambullo, "for a vacant place in this establishment!"
"He has a neighbour," resumed the Cripple, "who is not much wiser than himself, a bachelor of forty-five, who, with plenty to live on, would yet swell the train of some noble pauper. And yonder is the widow of an advocate, who, having counted three-score years and more, is about to seek the shelter of a convent, that her reputation may not, as she says, suffer scandal in this wicked world.
"I perceive also two virgins, or, to speak more properly, two girls of fifty years of age. They pray Heaven, in its mercy, to take to it their father, who keeps them mewed like minors; as they hope, when he is gone, to find handsome men who will marry them for love." "And why not?" inquired the Scholar; "there are stranger things than such men to be found." "I am perfectly of your opinion," replied Asmodeus: "they may find husbands, doubtless; but they ought not to expect to be so fortunate,—it is therein that their folly consists.