[Catherine: A Story by William Makepeace Thackeray]@TWC D-Link book
Catherine: A Story

CHAPTER X
6/13

Galgenstein has quoted Euripides thrice, Plato once, Lycophron nine times, besides extracts from the Latin syntax and the minor Greek poets.

Catherine's passionate embreathings are of the most fashionable order; and I call upon the ingenious critic of the X---- newspaper to say whether they do not possess the real impress of the giants of the olden time--the real Platonic smack, in a word?
Not that I want in the least to show off; but it is as well, every now and then, to show the public what one CAN do.
(* There WERE six columns, as mentioned by the accurate Mr.
Solomons; but we have withdrawn two pages and three- quarters, because, although our correspondent has been excessively eloquent, according to custom, we were anxious to come to the facts of the story.
Mr.Solomons, by sending to our office, may have the cancelled passages .-- O.Y.) Instead, however, of all this rant and nonsense, how much finer is the speech that the Count really did make! "It is a very fine evening,--egad it is!" The "egad" did the whole business: Mrs.Cat was as much in love with him now as ever she had been; and, gathering up all her energies, she said, "It is dreadful hot too, I think;" and with this she made a curtsey.
"Stifling, split me!" added his Excellency.

"What do you say, madam, to a rest in an arbour, and a drink of something cool ?" "Sir!" said the lady, drawing back.
"Oh, a drink--a drink by all means," exclaimed Mr.Billings, who was troubled with a perpetual thirst.

"Come, mo--, Mrs.Jones, I mean.
you're fond of a glass of cold punch, you know; and the rum here is prime, I can tell you." The lady in the mask consented with some difficulty to the proposal of Mr.Billings, and was led by the two gentlemen into an arbour, where she was seated between them; and some wax-candles being lighted, punch was brought.
She drank one or two glasses very eagerly, and so did her two companions; although it was evident to see, from the flushed looks of both of them, that they had little need of any such stimulus.

The Count, in the midst of his champagne, it must be said, had been amazingly stricken and scandalised by the appearance of such a youth as Billings in a public place with a lady under his arm.


<<Back  Index  Next>>

D-Link book Top

TWC mobile books