"There is no prison-house to a man who calls upon Bacchus—stay—I will translate to you Schiller's Dithyramb. 'Then see I Bacchus—then up come Cupid and Phœbus, and all the Celestials are filling my dwelling.'"
Breaking into impromptu careless rhymes, Burley threw off a rude but spirited translation of that divine lyric.
"O materialist!" cried the boy, with his bright eyes suffused. "Schiller calls on the gods to take him to their heaven with him; and ye would debase the Gods to a gin palace."
"Ho, ho!" cried Burley with his giant laugh. "Drink, and you will understand the Dithyramb."
CHAPTER VII.
Suddenly one morning, as Leonard sat with Burley, a fashionable cabriolet, with a very handsome horse, stopped at the door—a loud knock—a quick step on the stairs, and Randal Leslie entered. Leonard recognized him and started. Randal glanced at him in surprise, and then, with a tact that showed he had already learned to profit by London life, after shaking hands with Burley, approached, and said with some successful attempt at ease, "Unless I am not mistaken, sir, we have met before. If you remember me, I hope all boyish quarrels are forgotten?"
Leonard bowed, and his heart was still good enough to be softened.
"Where could you two ever have met?" asked Burley.
"In a village green, and in single combat," answered Randal, smiling; and he told the story of the Battle of the Stocks with a well-bred jest on himself. Burley laughed at the story. "But," said he, when this laugh was over, "my young friend had better have remained guardian of the village stocks, than come to London in search of such fortune as lies at the bottom of an inkhorn."
"Ah," said Randal, with the secret contempt which men elaborately cultivated are apt to feel for those who seek to educate themselves—"ah, you make literature your calling, sir? At what school did you conceive a taste for letters?—not very common at our great public schools."