"Per Bacco, you are an oracle," said Riccabocca, laughing. "But I am not so sceptical you are. I honor the fair sex too much. There are a great many women who realize the ideal of men to be found in—the poets!"
"There's my dear Mrs. Dale," resumed the Parson, not heeding this sarcastic compliment to the sex, but sinking his voice into a whisper, and looking round cautiously—"there's my dear Mrs. Dale, the best woman in the world—an angel I would say, if the word was not profane; BUT—"
"What's the BUT?" asked the Doctor, demurely.
"But I too might say that 'we have not much in common,' if I were only to compare mind to mind, and, when my poor Carry says something less profound than Madame de Staël might have said, smile on her in contempt from the elevation of logic and Latin. Yet, when I remember all the little sorrows and joys that we have shared together, and feel how solitary I should have been without her—oh, then I am instantly aware that there is between us in common something infinitely closer and better than if the same course of study had given us the same equality of ideas; and I was forced to brace myself for a combat of intellect, as I am when I fall in with a tiresome sage like yourself. I don't pretend to say that Mrs. Riccabocca is a Mrs. Dale," added the Parson, with lofty candor—"there is but one Mrs. Dale in the world; but still, you have drawn a prize in the wheel matrimonial! Think of Socrates, and yet he was content even with his—Xantippe!"
Dr. Riccabocca called to mind Mrs. Dale's "little tempers," and inly rejoiced that no second Mrs. Dale had existed to fall to his own lot. His placid Jemima gained by the contrast. Nevertheless, he had the ill grace to reply, "Socrates was a man beyond all imitation!—Yet I believe that even he spent very few of his evenings at home. But, revenons à nos moutons, we are nearly at Mrs. Fairfield's cottage, and you have not yet told me what you have settled as to Leonard."
The Parson halted, took Riccabocca by the button, and informed him, in very few words, that Leonard was to go to Lansmere to see some relations there, who had the fortune, if they had the will, to give full career to his abilities.
"The great thing, in the meanwhile," said the Parson, "would be to enlighten him a little as to what he calls—enlightenment."
"Ah!" said Riccabocca, diverted, and rubbing his hands, "I shall listen with interest to what you say on that subject."
"And must aid me; for the first step in this modern march of enlightenment is to leave the poor Parson behind; and if one calls out, 'Hold! and look at the sign-post.' the traveller hurries on the faster, saying to himself, 'Pooh, pooh!—that is only the cry of the Parson!' But my gentleman, when he doubts me, will listen to you—you're a philosopher!"
"We philosophers are of some use now and then, even to Parsons!"