"Our poet could, at a pinch, answer you, sir:"
"'Velle suum cuique est, nec voto vivitur uno.
* * * *
Hic satur irriguo mavult turgescere somno;
Hic campo indulget!'" . . .[7]
"I understand, I understand," said the councillor, laughing at the just and malignant application of these verses. "I know it is said in Vienna that the Councillor Flachsinfingen would have figured well enough among the convivial gourmands of the banquet of Trimalchyon, and that the brutal baron of Henferester would have been able to wrestle in the Roman circus among the wild beasts. In fine, you poor student! poor poet! poor nightingale of the sweet song I . . . what relations could you have with this dull paunch of a Flachsinfingen, who dreams only of his table? What could you have said to him if it were not—"
'Quæ tibi summa boni est? Uncta vixisse patella
Semper? . . .'[8]
"It is the same thing with this gladiator, this brute of Henferester . . . whose great heavy body I cannot see without recalling these words of our divine master:
"'Hic aliquis de gente hircosa centurionum
Dicat; quod satis est sapio mihi; non ego curo
Esse quod Arcesilas ærumnosique Solones.'"[9]
"Ah well! you will own up then, sir," said the Marquis, laughing, "that having nothing else to say to my judges, I can hardly hope to interest them. Alas! I am neither a huntsman nor a gourmand. . . . If I had been I might, perhaps, have awakened some sympathy in my judges!"
"But all the councillors are not gladiators, nor sheep led by their wives, my young friend." . . .
"'At me nocturnis juvat impallescere chartis.'"[10]
"Ah! sir, my greatest misfortune is not to have judges like you." . . .