A parvenu, in giving an invitation to dinner to a celebrated violinist who had just given a concert at the house of a banker, said to him, with pretended carelessness—
“Oh! by-the-bye—you will bring your violin, won’t you?”
“Thank you,” replied the artist, “but my violin never dines out.”
An old and knowing lawyer in the provinces, while waiting for the court to open, fell into conversation with another lawyer, equally old and knowing, who said to him—
“Who can that Fra Diavolo[[39]] be whose name occurs so often under the heading, ‘The Milan theatres’?”
“Oh!” replied the first, with perfect seriousness, “he was a Terracina lawyer.”
A provincial householder returned from a shooting expedition in the marshes, wet to the skin. Entering the house, he called out, with chattering teeth, to his wife, “Get the fire lit at once!” The latter, after going to the window and looking at the neighbours’ chimneys, replied—“No, indeed!—No one else has a fire lit, and I do not wish to make myself the subject of remark!”
During dinner, at the Castle, the tutor was being questioned about the progress made by the heir-presumptive to the coronet.
“Just now we are working at natural science. Our noble pupil is making rapid progress in chemistry.”
“Is he learning about dynamite?” asked the Marchioness quickly.