Hold, cried De Lancaster, I have Giraldus on the table, and here he tells us of an island, where no woman can be delivered of a child.
Pooh! said the colonel, he is an old woman himself, and can be delivered of nothing but lies.
Hold, resumed the expounder of Giraldus; here is another island, which is partly inhabited by good, and partly by evil spirits.
All islands are alike for that, said the colonel.
Have a little patience; we have not done yet with Giraldus’s islands, for here is one, where dead bodies cannot putrefy; and look! here is another, that outgoes all the others, where nobody can ever die—Mark his words—Nemo unquam moritur, unquam mortuus fuit, vel morte naturali mori potuit.
Excellent Giraldus! exclaimed the colonel; if he does but make out his immortal island to be that which women cannot enter, the grand desideratum is obtained.
He does not say that, replied De Lancaster.
Then he had better have said nothing about it, Philip cried out from his corner, for fear our wives should find it out.
At this instant our hero John made his appearance with a most flaming and tremendous sketch of David Williams, playing on his harp at sun-down, as he had seen him in the gallery. This was the first unlucky start of John’s genius in the branch of portrait-painting, and though it was in the grand gusto of Michael Angelo, it was not quite so good as Michael Angelo would have made it, though John had bestowed as much red ink upon it as would have served a merchant’s clerk for a twelve-month.
At the sight of that red ink, so profusely squandered, Philip betrayed no small alarm, and demanded where he got it. John had found a bottle of it upon the chimney-piece in his father’s bedroom.