A. I should say that he was a musician with a turn for pleasing variations.
Q. Very good. And how would you speak of Guy Faux on the eve of blowing up the House of Commons?
A. An experimentalist who would have been a useful lecturer upon chemistry at the Royal Institution.
Q. And could you refer to Blue Beard after the discovery of the cause of his last widowerhood without giving offence?
A. Yes; as a married man who objected on principle to the Mormon practice of being wedded to more than one wife at a time.
Q. Yes. And what would you say of Marie de Medicis, who is reported to have fired at the Huguenots from the Louvre?
A. I should say that her late Majesty took such an interest in field sports, as nowadays would have secured her election to the Gun Club.
Q. And, lastly, were you asked to describe Henry the Eighth after he had slaughtered most of his wives, plundered all the monasteries, and imprisoned or executed many of his subjects, what would you call him?
A. Without hesitation I should refer to him as "an excited politician."