'If you think the lesson may be useful to me, Sir Jaspar!--'
'Ah, cruel! "He jests at scars who never felt a wound". Mark, however, the visions by which I have been tutored. The servants gone, the lights removed, and the world's bustle superseded by stillness, darkness, and solitude,--then, when my fancy meant to revel in smiles, dimples, sweet looks, and recreative wiles, then,--what a transformation from hope and enjoyment, to shame and derision! I no sooner closed my poor eyes, than an hundred little imps of darkness scrambled up my pillow. How was I tweaked, jirked, and jolted! Mumbled, jumbled, and pinched! Some of them encircled my eye-balls, holding mirrours in each hand. They spoke not; the mirrours were all eloquent! You think, they expressed, of a young girl? Behold here what a young girl must think of you! Others jammed my lean, lank arms into a machine of whale-bone, to strength and invigorate them for offering support, in cases of difficulty or danger, to my fair one: others fastened elastic strings to my withered neck and shoulders, to enable me, by little pulleys, to raise my head, after every obsequious reverence to my goddess. Crowds of the nimblest footed dived their little forked fingers into my heart, plucking up by the root sober contentment and propriety; and pummelling into their places restlessness, jealousy, and suspicion: mocking me when they had done, by peeping into my ears, and squeaking out, with merry tittering, See! see! see! what sickly rubbish the old dotard has got in his crazy noddle!'
Juliet again smiled, but so faintly, from uncertainty to what this fantastic gallantry might tend, that Sir Jaspar, looking at her with concern, said,
'How's this, my dainty Ariel? Why so serious a brow? Have some of my nocturnal visitants whisked themselves through the key-hole of your chamber-door, also? And have they tormented your fancy with waking visions of fearful omens? Spurn them all! sweet syren! What can the tricks and malice of hobgoblins, or even the freaks and vagaries of fortune itself, enact against youth, beauty, and health such as yours? Give me but such arms, and I will brave the wayward sisters themselves.'
More seriously, then, 'Alas!' he cried, 'what is it, thus mystic, yet thus attractive, that allures me whether I will or not into your chains?--Could I but tell who, or what you are,--besides being an angel,--it is possible there might occur some idea,--some--some little notion of means to exorcise the wicked familiars that severally annoy us. Tell me but under what semblance the pigmy enemies invade you? Whether, as usual, with the darts of Master Cupid, shot, furiously, into your snowy bosom, or--'