Now, O reader! I know that, in thy secret heart, thou art chuckling over the want of knowledge in the sacred arcana of the domestic hearth betrayed by the author; thou art saying to thyself, "A pretty way to conciliate 'little tempers' indeed, to add to the offence of spoiling the fish the crime of bringing an unexpected friend to eat it.

Pot-luck, quotha, when the pot 's boiled over this half hour!" But, to thy utter shame and confusion, O reader! learn that both the author and Parson Dale knew very well what they were about.
Dr.Riccabocca was the special favourite of Mrs.Dale, and the only person in the whole county who never put her out, by dropping in.

In fact, strange though it may seem at first glance, Dr.Riccabocca had that mysterious something about him, which we of his own sex can so little comprehend, but which always propitiates the other.

He owed this, in part, to his own profound but hypocritical policy; for he looked upon woman as the natural enemy to man, against whom it was necessary to be always on the guard; whom it was prudent to disarm by every species of fawning servility and abject complaisance.

He owed it also, in part, to the compassionate and heavenly nature of the angels whom his thoughts thus villanously traduced--for women like one whom they can pity without despising; and there was something in Signor Riccabocca's poverty, in his loneliness, in his exile, whether voluntary or compelled, that excited pity; while, despite his threadbare coat, the red umbrella, and the wild hair, he had, especially when addressing ladies, that air of gentleman and cavalier, which is or was more innate in an educated Italian, of whatever rank, than perhaps in the highest aristocracy of any other country in Europe.