"It does not escape even you, Master Lamont."
"Have I not eyes in my head and blood in my veins?" asked Pierre Lamont. "It warms me like wine to know that I and the loveliest woman for a hundred miles round are caged within the same roof."
Fritz indulged in another fit of laughter, and then exclaimed:
"She has caught you too, eh? Now, who would have thought it? Two of the cleverest lawyers in the world fixed with one arrow! Beauty is a divine gift, Master Lamont. To possess it is almost as good as being born a fool."
"I shall lie awake and read love-verses. Listen to Zappi, fool."
And in a voice really tender, Pierre Lamont read from the book:
"A hundred pretty little loves, in fun, Were romping; laughing, rioting one day."
"A hundred!" cried Fritz, chuckling and rubbing his hands. "A hundred--pretty--little loves! If Father Capel were to hear you, his face would grow as long as my arm.
"Wrong, Fritz, wrong. His face would beam, and he would listen for the continuation of the poem."
"'Let's fly a little now,' said one, 'I pray.' 'Whither?' 'To beauty's face.' 'Agreed--'tis done.'
"Faster than bees to flowers they wing their way To lovely maids--to mine, the sweetest one; And to her hair and panting lips they run-- Now here, now there, now everywhere they stray.
"My love so full of loves--delightful sight! Two with their torches in her eyes, and two Upon her eyelids with their bows alight."
"You read rarely, Master Lamont," said Fritz. "It is true, is it not, that, when you were in practice, you were called the lawyer with the silver tongue?"
The picture of this withered, dried-up old lawyer, sitting up in bed, with a yellow handkerchief for a night-cap tied round his head, reading languishing verses in a tender voice, and striving to bring into his weazened features an expression in harmony with them, was truly a comical one.
"Why, Master Lamont," said Fritz in admiration, "you were cut out for a gallant. Had you recited those lines in the drawing-room, you would have had all the ladies at your feet--supposing," he added, with a broad grin, "they had all been blind."
"Ah me!" said Pierre Lamont, throwing aside the book with a mocking sigh. "Too old--too old!"
"It is not to be denied, Fritz. And shrunken."