[Burlesques by William Makepeace Thackeray]@TWC D-Link book
Burlesques

CHAPTER VII
3/3

Opening it, there, where I had left ingots, sacks of bright tomauns, kopeks and rupees, strings of diamonds as big as ducks' eggs, rubies as red as the lips of my Belinda, countless strings of pearls, amethysts, emeralds, piles upon piles of bank-notes--I found--a piece of paper! with a few lines in the Sanscrit language, which are thus, word for word, translated: "EPIGRAM.
"(On disappointing a certain Major.) "The conquering Lion return'd with his prey, And safe in his cavern he set it, The sly little fox stole the booty away; And, as he escaped, to the lion did say, 'AHA! don't you wish you may get it ?'" Confusion! Oh, how my blood boiled as I read these cutting lines.

I stamped,--I swore,--I don't know to what insane lengths my rage might have carried me, had not at this moment a soldier rushed in, screaming, "The enemy, the enemy!".


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