"Certainly not. But you are out of the pale of law itself just at present; and it would surely be a reason for State policy to withhold your pardon, and it would be to the loss of that favour with your own countrymen, which would now make that pardon so popular, if it were known that the representative of your name were debased by your daughter's alliance with an English adventurer,—a clerk in a public office. Oh, sage in theory, why are you such a simpleton in action?"
Nothing moved by this taunt, Riceabocca rubbed his hands, and then stretched them comfortably over the fire.
"My friend," said he, "the representation of my name would pass to my son."
"But you have no son."
"Hush! I am going to have one; my Jemima informed me of it yesterday morning; and it was upon that information that I resolved to speak to Leslie. Am I a simpleton now?"
"Going to have a son," repeated Harley, looking very bewildered; "how do you know it is to be a son?"
"Physiologists are agreed," said the sage, positively, "that where the husband is much older than the wife, and there has been a long interval without children before she condescends to increase the population of the world, she (that is, it is at least as nine to four)—she brings into the world a male. I consider that point therefore as settled, according to the calculations of statisticians and the researches of naturalists."
Harley could not help laughing, though he was still angry and disturbed.
"The same man as ever; always the fool of philosophy."
"/Cospetto!/" said Riccabocca. "I am rather the philosopher of fools.
And talking of that, shall I present you to my Jemima?"