I give dinners, and I give balls,
More “comfortable” than at the Crystal Palace.
During the evening we dance the Schottische,
And drink porter, and eat sandwich (rhyme).
As regards my powers of entertainment,
I have enormous ones,
Miousique,
And also gymnastics,
And I can also dance
The Scottish jig,
I waltz,
And I can even box,
That is the English lady’s song. We do our friendly allies more justice upon our boards. An amiable commentator might add that we do not, perhaps, render their peculiarities less ridiculous by transcribing them faithfully.
But Madame Pluto, awakened from her trance, is upon her husband’s track, and there is a sort of leaning to virtue in the fable of the “Beauté du Diable. Seven of the young ladies become no better than they should be, but Fanchette holds out, and preserves her character, until a diabolical stratagem makes her believe her lover false to her. Then her freshness and beauty begin to abandon her, feminine vanity awakens, and she accepts a gift of Rouge!
“Victory all along the line,” cries Belphegor-Brasseur. Re-appear Pluto, young and blooming, light-haired and loveable. Le Beauté du Diable has returned to him, and, as the Postillion of Longjumeau, he dances and exults in his recovered powers of fascination. The game is won.
But the French Pluto is not quite so bad as the English one. At least he is enough of the Mahu, the gentleman, to avoid causing scandals, or giving a lady, even if she is only his wife, unnecessary annoyance. Madame Pluto is furious at the restoration of his beauty, and is about to proceed to scratching, when he mollifies her by the most emphatic declaration that if he wished for personal graces, it was only that he might be more pleasing to her, that he had always been a conscientious husband, and that, if he had occasionally manifested a little levity, it was nothing; and on revient toujours à ses premières amours. He even presents her with the latch-key of his private apartments, but mentions, in an “aside,” that he will have the lock changed at the earliest opportunity. Madame pouts, and then pets him, and only asks what is to become of her poor little protégées. Pluto replies that they have nothing to complain of—they have lost the beauty of the Devil, which is that of mere girls, but they have gained the beauty of the Woman. A sign by his hand, and we have the Normandy village again, all the seven young ladies are home once more, joyously singing, and all declare that they have husbands—and all show that they have babies. Fanchette is absent; but her lover, who had behaved singularly ill under the tuition of his fiendly friends, repents, and cries out for her, and, as her offence was very small, her beauty is restored to her, and she is restored to her lover. M. Brasseur then insists upon being sent back to the Palais Royal, and Pluto keeps his word, wishing the actor un succès d’enfer. A dance and chorus of course finish the Memorandum of Responsibility.
Well, the report of the committee of the Rotund Caffy, that the piece could not be “done” for the English stage, will probably be confirmed by the English reader. Any way, we have told the story of the drama that delights Paris, and humbly venture to think that we have taken some little revenge for M. Brasseur’s English Lady.
A SOLO ON THE SERPENT.
Let those who flatter themselves that they are adepts in natural history, and more especially in that part of the subject which relates to Reptilia, listen unto the words of Charles Owen, D.D., of Warrington, in the County of Lancaster, who published an essay on serpents one hundred and twenty years ago, and own themselves enlightened. If they will but read with proper faith, they will find that there were several things, besides serpents, in the year 1741, which “are not dreamt of in their philosophy.”
Our author does not claim a personal acquaintance with the wonderful creatures he describes. “I don’t pretend,” he says, in his preface, “to new discoveries, but only to collect and bring into one view what has been said by different persons, which is not to be found by any without many books and much time, and which, without the present English dress, would not be understood by others at all.” A most royal road to learning does he lay down in his 240 quarto pages; and those who please may take a short cut with us through the country.
Serpents, you will be good enough to remember, are of three kinds:—the terestial (sic); the acquatic (sic); and the amphibious. There be some with legs and some without; some viviparous and some oviparous; some carnivorous and some vermivorous, feeding upon worms and other reptiles in the summer time. In the winter they all live upon air, which is defined by Dr. Owen as being “that thin elastic fluid mass wherein we live, move or have our being,” but of the “real peculiar nature,” of which we only know “that it is the most heterogeneous body in the world, a kind of secondary chaos, being a compound of minute particles of various kinds. Earth, water, minerals, vegetables, animals, &c., collected together by solar or artificial heat.” The serpent is, therefore, not so badly off for variety of food at Christmas as we might be led to imagine. He has five courses at least for his dinner by merely drawing in his breath; and indeed it is not easy to see how some of the tribe could exist upon less generous fare, so huge is their size, as described by our author. “In Norway,” he tells us, “are two serpents of very large proportions: one is two hundred feet long, and lives in rocks and desolate mountains near the sea about Bergen, which in summer nights ranges about in quest of plunder, devouring lambs, calves, swine, and other animals that fall in its way. In a calm sea it ransacks the superficies of the water (being thus clearly of the amphibious division) and devours the polypus, and all sorts of sea crabs.”