DOSS MOI TANE STIGMEN!
as doubtless, when the important hour of dinner arrives, I trust that your Grace will be free to——But tempus et hora—let the time and season tell! I shall not boast too soon, but leave it to your Grace's discreet arbitrament! That will be, my Lord, the tempus opportunum perfectly to illustrate the noble theory of luxury! at which methinks your Grace shall marvel much."
"For me to dissent," rejoined the duke, "my good Sir Patricius, from the two high authorities whom you have cited, would be somewhat too like Diogenes, surrounded with sunshine, yet growling in his tub; and treason prepense certes against the noble culinary art!—besides ingratitude to mine honoured host of Tervuren!
"I know full well that Apicius Cælius, whom you quote as an authority, Sir Patricius, wrote a learned essay, de Arte Coquinaria—a treatise on the culinary art; and that he may well be considered as the Pontifex maximus Epicuri. But respecting and regarding the great Lucullus, whose distinction arose from a higher flight than a mere knowledge of the culinary art, I must observe, en passant, that I flatter myself I do somewhat resemble that great character, namely, in my fondness for retirement, which I only regret I had not sooner cultivated, as it would have placed me above the reach of ambition, and beyond the pangs of care!
"Indeed had I been born in Belgium, I am tolerably certain that my past life, instead of being occupied and engrossed in the turmoil of courts and camps, would tranquilly have passed over in pastoral seclusion; for man, Sir Patricius, say what we may,
'Proud man! though dressed in little brief authority,'
is after all but at best the poor and passive creature of time, place, period, and circumstance!—and, under this firm conviction, I know I should have wielded the shepherd's crook, and not the marshal's truncheon!"
"My Lord Duke, there is no gainsaying your Grace's dictum, which, in sooth, is fully illustrated by the beautiful lines of gentle Master Waller:—
'Great Julius on the mountains bred,
His flocks, perhaps, or herds had led;