'Tailors! by Jupiter! Serve'em right, the rogues. Tailors lining upon ragou royal, Spanish olea, Puddock—fat livers, and green morels in the Phœnix, the scoundrels, and laughing to see poor gentlemen of the Royal Irish Artillery starving at their gates—hang 'em.'
'Well! well! Listen to the Good Angel,' said Puddock, taking up the book and declaiming his best—
'O thou hast lost celestial happiness,
Pleasures unspeakable, bliss without end.
Hadst thou affected sweet divinity,
Hell or the devil had no power on thee—
Hadst thou kept on that way. Faustus, behold
In what resplendent glory thou hadst sat,
On yonder throne, like those bright shining spirits,
And triumphed over hell! That hast thou lost;
And now, poor soul, must thy good angel leave thee;
The jaws of hell are open to receive thee.'
'Stop that; 'tis all cursed rant,' said Devereux. 'That is, the thing itself; you make the most it.'
'Why, truly,' said Puddock, 'there are better speeches in it. But 'tis very late; and parade, you know—I shall go to bed. And you—'
'No. I shall stay where I am.'
'Well, I wish you good-night, dear Devereux.'
'Good-night, Puddock'
And the plump little fellow was heard skipping down stairs, and the hall-door shut behind him. Devereux took the play that Puddock had just laid down, and read for a while with a dreary kind of interest. Then he got up, and, I'm sorry to say, drank another glass of the same strong waters.
'To-morrow I turn over a new leaf;' and he caught himself repeating Puddock's snatch of Macbeth, 'To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow.'