"I never saw them," dogmatically pronounced Miss Harridale.
"Then Corneille," added the count; "le grand Corneille, there is a genius! Has he not painted Romans?"
"Not to my apprehension," said Cecil. "His Romans are Gascons. The old Horace, for example, who is so much admired, seems to me to have more rhodomontade than grandeur. He is not a man, but a figment!"
Miss Harridale smiled her approbation of this, and declared that the celebrated qu'il mourût was not an "idea."
The count failing to understand that profound objection, asked if she did not regard the qu'il mourût as sublime?
"Not at all."
"Well, I suppose I am a heretic," said Meredith Vyner; "but to speak the honest truth, French sublimity always seems to me to fall very wide of the mark."
"Surely, not very," said Cecil; "only a step."
A general laugh greeted this sally, which made Mrs. Vyner remark Cecil, whom she now remembered as the young man Marmaduke spoke to at Dr. Winston's. She resolved to invite him.
"Is this Rachel—I think you call her—handsome?" asked Lord Boodle, tapping his lips with his cane.