By Gar, that horrid, strange buffoon
Cannot keep time to any tune.
A French dancing-master, while playing on the fiddle, is exercising a pretty and graceful maiden in the dance; the professor is out of temper with the fair pupil's partner, although the lady seems absorbed in the excitement of the motion. 'Tis Death waltzing his delicate victim—entranced and unsuspicious—into a consumption, which will end in the churchyard.
Plate 17. Maternal Tenderness.
Thus it appears a pond of water
May prove an instrument of slaughter.
The picture in this instance represents a lake situated in a noble park. Two youths have been tempted to bathe; one is lifted out of the water apparently lifeless. His mother, who has been alarmed by the intelligence of her son's danger, has just arrived, at the instant that the seemingly dead body is borne to the bank. The sudden shock has proved too much for nature to withstand. The tender parent falls back overpowered and unconscious, and Death, with an air of solicitude, is ready there to catch her falling form in his bony support, since she has become his charge.
Plate 18. The Kitchen.
Thou slave to ev'ry gorging glutton,
I'll spit thee like a leg of mutton.
While dinner is just prepared for my lord's table the stout chef and his attendant myrmidons are thrown into disorder by the appearance of an unwelcome intruder. Dishes are dropped, everything is forgotten but personal security. The fat first male cook is the object of Death's attack, and the grim skeleton, armed with a long roasting spit, is trampling over the fallen person of a frightened kitchen-maid, and is proceeding to impale the great chef, who is the only person present that is making a stand against the assassin.
Plate 19. The Gig.