Peabody. And a Berkeley go down to posterity with “a punch on the head” (I wonder how he likes it?) from his noble relation—for all the world as old Fox sends down his martyrs—in a copperplate picture.
Nutts. No notion, I suppose, of the next independent member for the equally independent voters of Western Gloucester? Not known yet who’s to wear the gold-band, the plush, and the family facings?
Tickle. That’s in the bosom of the Most Noble Lord Fitzhardinge! He’ll do what’s right, I daresay.
Peabody. But isn’t there a law against peers of England dirtying their precious white hands with making—just as children make dirt-pies—members of Parliament?
Nutts. To be sure. But peers never do make ’em; they only say, Let ’em be made; and their journeymen see to that. A good deal of it’s quite the same as doll-making; and there’s dolls in my house that open their eyes and shut ’em—and speak to notes that go for “no” and “yes”—and with these dolls I make all the profit I can. Only there’s this difference: the dolls never pretend to be anything but dolls; they are faithful to their wires, and when they speak, they never for a moment try to say—that very difficult word for a doll of any sort—“Independent.”
Tickle. Talking about dolls, I see they’ve married them little girls in Spain. Mr Lewis Philips has got another daughter.
Nosebag. Seem to have made quite a ballet-dance of it. Seem to have danced the princes from town to town—as if the holy state of wedlock was to lead to nothing better than a jig. When the princes got to Tolosa (reads), “a lively and original symphony announced the approach of the dancers; at the head of these marched a choir of little boys, arrayed in white dresses, all bespangled with gold, with diadems on their heads, and guitars or lutes in their hands. Then advanced, in double line, the male and female dancers—the latter in blue and white dresses, the former in white pantaloons and pink waistcoats.”
Nutts. I see: the little boys “with diadems on their heads” is a capital touch; and means the lot of little princes that’s to be born in Paris, to be ready for the Spanish throne.
Slowgoe. And what does this mean? I mean this about “the fireworks”?
Nutts. The fireworks means the war that’s to be lighted for the glory of France, when the King of the French is in the busum of his partic’lar saint, and, gone from this world, has left to it the benefit of bullets, bayonets, and saltpetre, besides the new diskiveries that’s to beat Warner, and to blow up Maltar and Gibraltar by way of experiment like.