“Do play the bashful.”
“I shall go.”
“Lock the door. He sha’n’t leave the room till he recites something.”
And so I repeat some verses at last, and vomit absurdities, which they praise, and the smoke, the hubbub, and the purgatory increases.
Thank Heavens, I succeed in escaping from this new pandemonium. At last I again breathe the pure air of the street; there are now no more lunatics, no more Old Castilians around me.
“Ye gods, I thank you!” I exclaimed, breathing freely like a stag who has just escaped a dozen dogs and can barely hear their distant barks. “Henceforward I do not pray for riches, office, or honours. But deliver me from those houses in which a dinner-party is an event, in which a decent table is only laid for visitors, in which they think they are doing you a good turn while they are doing you a bad one, in which they are over-polite, in which they recite verses, in which there are children, in which there are fat men, in which, finally, there reigns the brutal frankness of the Old Castilians! If I fall again by similar temptations, may I ever lack roast beef, may beefsteaks vanish from this world, may timbales of macaroni be annihilated, may there be no turkeys in Perigueux, nor pies in Perigord, may the wines of Bordeaux dry up, and everybody but myself drink the delicious foam of champagne!”
Mariano José de Larra (Figaro) (1809-1837).
A DEMAGOGIC JOURNALIST.
Eleven was striking by the nearest clock; and as the last stroke vibrated upon Don Liberato Plebist tympanum an instantaneous electric commotion was transmitted from it to his brain, which made him hastily sit up in bed and begin to dress. He violently rubbed his eyes with his knuckles, which, together with the use of his pocket-handkerchief and four or five loud hollow coughs, sufficed to cause him to regain entire possession of his senses and natural powers, and shook him out of that kind of lethargy, or state of doze, which between a deep sleep and being wide awake occupies the function of a scruple.
He had fallen asleep with a fixed idea that he must rise early to write a long, forcible, and brilliant article, and seeing the sun already so advanced on its course, he jumped out of bed, and made towards his study in a rich dressing-gown and canvas slippers delicately embroidered by some feminine hand. He leaned back in an armchair before a solid mahogany writing-table, pulled the bell loudly three times by a silken rope; a footman appeared, who placed upon the table the silver brazier with some large red-hot pieces of charcoal; and then, when he had demanded breakfast with an imperative manner, and the man had withdrawn, Don Liberato lit a fragrant Havana, seized it between his teeth, grasped the pen with his right hand, rested his brow on his left, and leaning his elbow on the desk and gently tapping his right foot on the carpet, as if to excite ideas by this slight motion, remained in this attitude for five minutes, at the end of which he put his pen to paper and began to write to the following effect:—