"But vy you no talk, Monsieur de Dauphin?" said the Linettini gently, turning to Percy; "you ver silent."
"Unhappily, I have been so long out of town that these anecdotes of the day are caviare to me."
"But so," cried Saville, "would a volume of French Memoirs be to any one that took it up for the first time; yet the French Memoirs amuse one exactly as much as if one had lived with the persons written of. Now that ought to be the case with conversations upon persons. I flatter myself, Fanny, that you and I hit off characters so well by a word or two, that no one who hears us wants to know anything more about them."
"I believe you," said Godolphin; "and that is the reason you never talk of yourselves."
"Bah! Apropos of egoism, did you meet Jack Barabel in Rome?"
"Yes, writing his travels. 'Pray,' said he to me (seizing me by the button) in the Coliseum, 'What do you think is the highest order of literary composition?' 'Why, an epic, I fancy,' said I; 'or perhaps a tragedy, or a great history, or a novel like Don Quixote.' 'Pooh!' quoth Barabel, looking important, 'there's nothing so high in literature as a good book of travels;' then sinking his voice into a whisper and laying his finger wisely on his nose, he hissed out, 'I have a quarto, sir, in the press!'"
"Ha! ha!" laughed Stracey, the old wit, picking his teeth, and speaking for the first time; "if you tell Barabel you have seen a handsome woman, he says, mysteriously frowning, 'Handsome, sir! has she travelled?—answer me that!'"
"But have you seen Paulton's new equipage? Brown carriage, brown liveries, brown harness, brown horses, while Paulton and his wife sit within dressed in brown cap-a-pie. The best of it is that Paulton went to his coachmaker, to order his carriage, saying, 'Mr. Houlditch, I am growing old—too old to be eccentric any longer; I must have something remarkably plain;' and to this hour Paulton goes brown-ing about the town, crying out to every one, 'Nothing like simplicity, believe me.'"
"He discharged his coachman for wearing white gloves instead of brown," said Stracey. "'What do you mean, sir,' cried he, 'with your d—d showy vulgarities?—don't you see me toiling my soul out to be plain and quiet, and you must spoil all, by not being brown enough!'"
"Ah, Godolphin, you seem pensive," whispered Fanny; "yet we are tolerably amusing, too."