Ottima.—Me!
Me! no, no, Sebald, not yourself—kill me!
Mine is the whole crime. Do but kill me—then
Yourself—then—presently—first hear me speak
I always meant to kill myself—wait, you!265
Lean on my breast—not as a breast; don't love me
The more because you lean on me, my own
Heart's Sebald! There, there, both deaths presently!
Sebald. My brain is drowned now—quite drowned: all I feel
Is ... is, at swift-recurring intervals,270
A hurry-down within me, as of waters
Loosened to smother up some ghastly pit:
There they go—whirls from a black, fiery sea!
Ottima. Not me—to him, O God, be merciful!
Talk by the way, while Pippa is passing from the hillside to Orcana. Foreign Students of painting and sculpture, from Venice, assembled opposite the house of Jules, a young French statuary, at Possagno.
1st Student. Attention! My own post is beneath this
window, but the pomegranate clump yonder will hide three
or four of you with a little squeezing, and Schramm and
his pipe must lie flat in the balcony. Four, five—who's a
defaulter? We want everybody, for Jules must not be5
suffered to hurt his bride when the jest's found out.
2nd Student. All here! Only our poet's away—never
having much meant to be present, moonstrike him! The
airs of that fellow, that Giovacchino! He was in violent
love with himself, and had a fair prospect of thriving in10
his suit, so unmolested was it—when suddenly a woman
falls in love with him, too; and out of pure jealousy he
takes himself off to Trieste, immortal poem and all—whereto
is this prophetical epitaph appended already, as
Bluphocks assures me—"Here a mammoth-poem lies,15
Fouled to death by butterflies." His own fault, the
simpleton! Instead of cramp couplets, each like a knife
in your entrails, he should write, says Bluphocks, both
classically and intelligibly.—Æsculapius, an Epic. Catalogue
of the drugs: Hebe's plaister—One strip Cools20
your lip. Phœbus's emulsion—One bottle Clears your
throttle. Mercury's bolus—One box Cures—
3rd Student. Subside, my fine fellow! If the marriage
was over by ten o'clock, Jules will certainly be here
in a minute with his bride.25
2nd Student. Good!—Only, so should the poet's muse
have been universally acceptable, says Bluphocks, et
canibus nostris—and Delia not better known to our
literary dogs than the boy Giovacchino!
1st Student. To the point now. Where's Gottlieb,30
the new-comer? Oh—listen, Gottlieb, to what has called
down this piece of friendly vengeance on Jules, of which
we now assemble to witness the winding-up. We are all
agreed, all in a tale, observe, when Jules shall burst out
on us in a fury by and by: I am spokesman—the verses35
that are to undeceive Jules bear my name of Lutwyche—but
each professes himself alike insulted by this strutting
stone-squarer, who came alone from Paris to Munich,
and thence with a crowd of us to Venice and Possagno
here, but proceeds in a day or two alone again—oh, alone40
indubitably!—to Rome and Florence. He, forsooth, take
up his portion with these dissolute, brutalized, heartless
bunglers!—so he was heard to call us all: now, is Schramm
brutalized, I should like to know? Am I heartless?
Gottlieb. Why, somewhat heartless; for, suppose Jules45
a coxcomb as much as you choose, still, for this mere
coxcombry, you will have brushed off—what do folks
style it?—the bloom of his life.