Here Pulito made his exit, singing “di tutti palpiti,” with an air of Cox-comical affectation, half assumed, half natural.
Tristo. “A handsome fellow, and a bright. But the day will come when a strong mind, and a well-stored memory, will be worth more than the vanished rapture of a woman’s smile. What a pity youth can never temper pleasure with——, hist! that stumbling step sounds like Apple’s.”
Nescio. “’Tis his,—let’s slip into the bed-room and see what Dumpling will do.”
Tristo. “Agreed; I promise myself materiel for laughter.”
[Enter Apple, with a look of pleased importance, and a mouth apparently ready to discharge a witticism.] “Ha! Pulito! Tristo! Quod! What, not a soul here but myself, who am solus, he! he! pretty good! I’ll lay that by, and use it when they come. What an ass that Tristo must be, never to laugh at my puns. However, he cannot help himself to-night. I have various good things, aside from puns. If the conversation turns upon wit, I shall say, ‘A witty sentence should be like a scorpion, the sting in the tail, but should not, like a scorpion, sting itself to death!’ If Tristo goes to rating me for smoking, I shall say, ‘A cigar is the summum bonum, pity its fumes are not perfumes!’ If Nescio says, ‘I am your host’—‘Yes,’ quoth I, ‘and in yourself an host.’ That stone will kill two birds; it is at once a pun and a compliment. Ah me! what is the literary world coming to? They all seem bent upon being dull, and the greatest of scriptorial (scriptural?) sins is to say a witty thing. Volumes of poetry and philosophy and oratory and the like come forth, and never a bit of fun in ’em all. Now in my view even a sermon would be vastly better, if the preacher, especially in the application, would discharge at the hearer a few judicious puns of a devotional cast. Bless me! where—where—confusion worse confounded! where are my cigars? I can never shine without them. I should be like Sampson shorn of his locks. I shall have to go by a dozen colleges to ——’s to get some. Well! ‘leve fit, quod bene fertur,’ ‘that’s a light fit, which is well borne.’ Ha, ha, good! remember that.”
As Apple leaves the room, Quod and Tristo, bursting with laughter, issue from their latebræ.
Tristo. “Bravo, Dumpling, bravo.”
Nescio. “Capital! capital! What if we appear to have just come in when he returns, and give him a chance to be witty—ha, ha!”
Tristo. “Constat—it is a covenant. But here he comes.”
[Enter Apple, puffing with haste, a bunch of cigars in his hand, and a lighted one in his mouth.]