“Unmoved?” cried he, emphatically; “shall I be moved by a lion? You see him there in a cage, and pity him; look back to when you might have seen him with a lamb in his claws!”
I could only look dismayed for a moment. “But, at least,” I said, “I hope what I hear is not true, though I now grow afraid to ask?”
“If it is anything about me,” he answered, “it is certainly not true.”
“I am extremely glad, indeed,” cried I, “for it has been buzzed about in the world that you were to draw up the final charge. This I thought most cruel of all; You, who have held back all this time—”
“Yes! pretty completely,” interrupted he, laughing. “No, not completely,” I continued; “but Yet YOU have made no direct formal speech, nor have come forward in any positive and formidable manner; therefore, as we have now heard all the others, and—almost enough—”
I was obliged to stop a moment, to see how this adventurous plainness was taken; and he really, though my manner showed me only rallying, looked I don’t know how, at such unexampled disrespect towards his brother orators. But I soon went quietly on: “To come forth now, after all that has passed, with the eclat of novelty, and,-for the most cruel part of all,—that which cannot be answered.”
“You think,” cried he, “’tis bringing a fresh courser into the field of battle, just as every other is completely jaded?”
“I think,” cried I, “that I am very generous to wish against what I should so much wish for, but for other considerations.”
“O, what a flattering way,” cried he, “of stating it! however, I can bear to allow you a little waste of compliments, which you know so well how to make; but I cannot bear to have you waste your compassion.”