Erupit—evasit, As Tully would phrase it, And none could have known where to find his Hic jacet— That sentence which man his mortality teaches— Sir Robert had disappeared, body and breeches!
"Heyday! Sir, heyday! What's the matter now—eh?" Quoth A'Becket, observing the gen'ral dismay, "How, again!—'pon my word this is really too bad! It would drive any Saint in the calendar mad.
"What, still at your tricking? You will have a kicking? I see you won't rest till you've got a good licking— Your claim, friend?—what claim?—why you show'd me before That your old claim was cancell'd—you've crossed out the score!
"Is it that way you'd Jew one? You've settled the true one? Do you mean to tell me he has run up a new one? Of the thousands you've cheated And scurvily treated, Name one you've dared charge with a bill once receipted! In the Bankruptcy Court should you dare to presume To attempt it, they'd soon kick you out of the room, —Ask Commissioner Fonblanque, or ask my Lord Brougham.
"And then to make under So barefaced a blunder, Your caption!—why, what's the world come to, I wonder? My patience! it's just like his impudence, drat him! —Stand out of the way there, and let me get at him!"
The Saint raised his arm, But Old Nick, in alarm, Dash'd up through the skylight, not doing much harm, While, quitte pour la peur, the Knight, sound on the whole, Down the chimney came tumbling as black as a coal!
Spare we to tell Of what after befell! How the Saint lectured Robert de Birchington well, Bade him alter his life, and held out as a warning The narrow escape he'd made on't that morning.
Nor need we declare How, then and there, The Jury and Coroner blew up the May'r For his breach of decorum as one of the Quorum, In not having Levybub brought up before 'em.
Nor will you require Me to state how the Prior Could never thenceforth bear the sight of a fire, Nor ever was heard to express a desire In cold weather to see the thermometer higher.
Nor shall I relate The subsequent fate Of St. Thomas à Becket, whose reverend pate Fitzurse and De Morville, and Brito and Tracy Shaved off, as his crown had been merely a jasey.[74]