“There is no sense in the phrase ‘good bye;’ it means nothing,” said the lady hastily: “it is an abbreviation of ‘good be with you.’ Now, if you mean to say that I am good, I deny it. I deny that I am either good or bad; good and bad being qualities not existing in the object, for what appears good to one may seem bad to another; but they arise in the idea of the individual.”
Posthumous and his companions were glad when they were out of hearing of the lady, whose metaphysics and chemistry they could not appreciate in the way she desired.
“Ah, do you see that tall man behind his whiskers?” inquired the manufacturer, pointing to a person who answered to such a description. “He has got a very remarkable, stately sort of whatso’name, hasn’t he? He’s a member of the government, a great patron of literature and science, and—and something I forget. He’s been known to spend as much as sixpence a week in the cheap publications; and many a miserable starving author, who has sent him his works, he has actually enriched with his good wishes. Great patron, isn’t he? The person he’s talking to in the beautiful head of hair, is a political writer on the ministerial side, who has a wonderful, incomprehensible—a—you understand, that’s very delightful. He writes about the glorious constitution, our admirable government, and—and something with a fine name I don’t remember, in a style that’s absolutely, completely, and downright thingembob. That lady, that seems to be looking after her youth and beauty, is the authoress of a work which has been very popular, called, ‘The whole Duty of Man,’ which is filled with long chapters upon short commons or fasting, praying, sneezing, the cultivation of carrots and virtue, the bringing up children and mustard and cress, and directions about paying bills and visits. The young man, trying to admire himself in the glass, is a novelist famous for the splendour of his imaginative conceptions—yes, of his imaginative conceptions. His books are like the rooms of a dealer in fashionable furniture; or-molu and mother-of-pearl, rosewood and ivory, buhl and something I forget, meet one in every page; and he writes about gold, and silver, and precious stones, as if he had been an apprentice to a jeweller. Then his stories are always celebrated for a certain pathetic whatso’name, which is much admired. Now let us go into the music room.”
The three associates passed through the crowd which filled the rooms to the great danger of the more breakable antiquities, Posthumous stopping occasionally to talk to one or welcome another, till they arrived in the music room, where they took some refreshments as they entered. A beautiful girl was accompanying herself while singing the following words, to which all seemed to listen with the greatest attention:—
The lunar tide began to flow,
The tidal wave moved to and fro,
Bright shone each constellation;
Except where in th’ horizon’s space
Some planets, with reluctant pace,
Commenced their declination.
Then Coma unto Stella came,
To show to her his ardent flame,
Apparent in aphelion;
As had been done for many years,
In their peculiar hemispheres,
While placed in perihelion.
“Ah, Stella!” said the glowing swain,
“My flame to thee I bring again,
In hopes thou wilt absorb it:
My course, eccentric though it be,
Moves near as it may come to thee
In my peculiar orbit.”
“Away!” cried Stella, “come not here;
Go, shine within another sphere,
I feel not thy attraction;
I have beheld thy parallax,
And noticed thy erratic tracks,
Thy action and reaction.”
A cloud on Coma’s face appeared,
And when its atmosphere was cleared,
In rapid execution
Of Stella’s dark command, he set,
And strove for ever to forget
Her radiant revolution.