"To presurrve beauty from the jeer of insult, the grasp of vie-olence is my duty and my prowfession. To adore it is my ree-ligion--and my fate!" replies the gallant highwayman, contriving with some address to retain his hold of the lady's hand, though encumbered by spurs, a sword, pistols, a mask, and an enormous three-cornered hat.
"And this man is proscribed, hunted, in danger, in disgrace!" exclaims the lady, aside, and therefore loud enough to be heard in the street. Claude Duval starts. The start of such an actor makes Dorothea jump. "Perdition!" he shouts, "ye have reminded me of what were well buried fathom-deep--obliterated--forgotten. Tr'you, lady, 'tis ee-ven so! I have a compact with my followers--the ransom--"
"Shall be paid right willingly," she answers; and forth-with the comic servant with the red nose wakes into spasmodic life, winks repeatedly, and performs a flourish on his "property" fiddle, a little out of tune with the real instrument in the orchestra at his feet.
"What are they going to do?" asked Dorothea, in great anxiety.
"Hold your noise!" answers Jim, and the action of the piece progresses.
It is fortunate, perhaps, that minuets have gone out of fashion, if they involved such a test of endurance as that in which Claude Duval and his fair captive now disport themselves with an amount of bodily exertion it seems real cruelty to encore. His concluding caper shakes the mask from his partner's face, and the young lady falls, with a shriek, into his arms, leaving the audience in that happy state of perplexity, which so enhances the interest of a plot, as to whether her distress originates in excess of sentiment or deficiency of wind.
"It's beautiful!" whispers Dorothea, refreshing herself with an orange. "It 'minds me of the first time you and me ever met at Highbury Barn."
Jim grunts, but his grunt is not that of a contented sleeper, rather of one who is woke from a dream.
After a tableau like the last, it is natural that Claude Duval should find a certain want of excitement in the next scene, where he appears as a respectable householder in the apartments of his lawful spouse. This lady, leaving a cradle in the background, and advancing to the footlights, proceeds to hover round her husband, after the manner of stage wives, with neck protruded and arms spread out, like a woman who is a little afraid of a wasp or earwig, but wants to catch the creature all the same. He sits with his back to her, as nobody ever does sit but a stage husband at home, and punches the floor with his spur. It is strictly natural that she should sing a faint song with a slow movement on the spot.
It is perhaps yet more natural that this should provoke him exceedingly, so he jumps up, reaches a cupboard in two strides, and pulls out of it his whole paraphernalia, sword, pistols, mask, three-cornered hat, everything but his horse. Then the wife, from her knees, informs all whom it may concern, that for the first time in their happy married life she has learned her husband is a robber, as they both call it, by "prowfession."