The talk of Premiers offered Whitmonby occasion for a flight to the Court of Vienna and Kaunitz. Wilmers told a droll story of Lord Busby's missing the Embassy there. Westlake furnished a sample of the tranquil sententiousness of Busby's brother Robert during a stormy debate in the House of Commons.
'I remember,' Dacier was reminded, 'hearing him say, when the House resembled a Chartist riot, “Let us stand aside and meditate on Life. If Youth could know, in the season of its reaping of the Pleasures, that it is but sowing Doctor's bills!”'
Latterly a malady had supervened, and Bob Busby had retired from the universal to the special;—his mysterious case.
'Assure him, that is endemic. He may be cured of his desire for the exposition of it,' said Lady Dunstane.
Westlake chimed with her: 'Yes, the charm in discoursing of one's case is over when the individual appears no longer at odds with Providence.'
'But then we lose our Tragedy,' said Whitmonby.
'Our Comedy too,' added Diana. 'We must consent to be Busbied for the sake of the instructive recreations.'
'A curious idea, though,' said Sullivan Smith, 'that some of the grand instructive figures were in their day colossal bores!'
'So you see the marvel of the poet's craft at last?' Diana smiled on him, and he vowed: 'I'll read nothing else for a month!' Young Rhodes bade him beware of a deluge in proclaiming it.
They rose from table at ten, with the satisfaction of knowing that they had not argued, had not wrangled, had never stagnated, and were digestingly refreshed; as it should be among grown members of the civilized world, who mean to practise philosophy, making the hour of the feast a balanced recreation and a regeneration of body and mind.