After dinner, came wine—bright, sparkling wine, whose magical influence gilds the dull realities of life with the soft radiance of fairy land! How the foaming champagne glittered in the silver cup, and danced joyously to the ripe, pouting lip of beauty, and the eloquent mouth of divinity! How brilliant became their eyes, and what a glorious roseate hue suffused their cheeks!
Again and again was the goblet drained and replenished, until the maddening spell of intoxication was upon them both. Hurrah! away with religion, and sermonizing, and conscience! Bacchus is the only true divinity, and at his rosy shrine let us worship, and pledge him in brimming cups of the bright nectar, the drink of the gods!
Then came obscene revels and libidinous acts. The depraved Josephine, attired in a superb robe of lace, her splendid bust uncovered, and her cheeks flushed with wine, danced with voluptuous freedom, while the intoxicated rector, reeling and flourishing a goblet, sang a lively opera air, in keeping with her graceful but indelicate movements. Then—but we will not inflict upon the reader the disgusting details of that evening's licentious extravagances.
Midnight came and the doctor, tipsy as he was, saw the necessity of taking his departure; for though urged by Josephine to pass the night with her, he dared not comply, knowing that his absence from home all night would appear strange and suspicious to his housekeeper and domestics, and give rise to unpleasant inquiries and remarks. He therefore sallied forth, and though he staggered occasionally, he got along tolerably well, until he encountered a watchman standing half asleep in a doorway, muffled up in his huge cloak; and then, with that invincible spirit of mischief which characterizes a drunken man, the Doctor determined to have a 'lark' with the night guardian, somewhat after the fashion of the wild, harem-scarem students at the University at which he had graduated—in which pranks he had often participated.
Leaning against a lamp-post support, he began singing, in a loud and boisterous manner—
'Watchman—hic—tell us of the—hic—night.'
Now it happened that the watchman was one of those surly ruffians who never stop to remonstrate with a poor fellow, in whom wine has triumphed over wit. Instead of kindly inquiring his address, and conducting the unfortunate gentleman to his residence, the self-important petty official adopted the very means to irritate him and render him more boisterous. In a savage, brutal manner, he ordered the doctor to 'stop his d——d noise, and move on, or he'd make him!'
'Nay, friend, thou art insolent,' remarked the young gentleman, who drunk as he was, could not brook the insults of the low, vulgar ruffian.
'Insolent, am I?—take that, and be d——d to you!' cried the fellow, raising a heavy bludgeon, and dealing the poor Doctor a blow on the head which felled him senseless to the ground, covered with blood.
'That'll teach you genteel chaps not to meddle with us officers,' growled the watchman. 'I wonder what he's got about him—perhaps some dangerous weapon—let's see.' Thrusting his hand into the pockets of his victim, he drew forth a valuable gold watch, and a purse containing a considerable sum of money. Why did he so rapidly transfer these articles to this own pockets? Was if for the purpose of restoring them to the owner, on the morrow? We shall see.