tasted but one — that rascal Hippocrates! — smelt of asafœtida — ugh! ugh! ugh! — caught a wretched cold washing him in the Styx — and after all he gave me the cholera morbus.”
“The — hiccup! — wretch!” ejaculated Bon-Bon, “the — hiccup! — abortion of a pill-box!” — and the philosopher dropped a tear.
“After all,” continued the visiter, “after all, if a dev — if a gentleman wishes to live, he must have more talents than one or two; and with us a fat face is an evidence of diplomacy.”
“How so?”
“Why we are sometimes exceedingly pushed for provisions. You must know that, in a climate so sultry as mine, it is frequently impossible to keep a spirit alive for more than two or three hours; and after death, unless pickled immediately, (and a pickled spirit is not good,) they will — smell — you understand, eh? Putrefaction is always to be apprehended when the souls are consigned to us in the usual way.”
“Hiccup! — hiccup! — good God! how do you manage?”
Here the iron lamp commenced swinging with redoubled violence, and the devil half started from his seat; — however, with a slight sigh, he recovered his composure, merely saying to our hero in a low tone: “I tell you what, Pierre Bon-Bon, we must have no more swearing.”
The host swallowed another bumper, by way of denoting thorough comprehension and acquiescence, and the visiter continued:
“Why, there are several ways of managing. The most of us starve: some put up with the pickle: for my part I purchase my spirits vivente corpore, in which case I find they keep very well.”
“But the body! — hiccup! — the body!!!”
“The body, the body — well, what of the body? — oh! ah! I perceive. Why, sir, the body is not at all affected by the transaction. I have made innumerable purchases of the kind in my day, and the parties never experienced any inconvenience. There were Cain and Nimrod, and Nero, and Caligula, and Dionysius, and Pisistratus, and — and a thousand others, who never knew what it was to have a soul during the latter part of their lives; yet, sir, these men adorned society. Why isn’t there A —— , now, whom you know as well as I? Is he not in possession of his faculties, mental and corporeal? Who writes a keener epigram? Who reasons more wittily? Who —— but, stay! I have his agreement in my pocketbook.”
Thus saying, he produced a red leather wallet, and took from it a number of papers. Upon some of these Bon-Bon caught a glimpse of the letters Machi — Maza — Robesp — with the words Caligula, George, Elizabeth. His Majesty selected a narrow slip of parchment, and from it read aloud the following words:
“In consideration of certain mental endowments which it is unnecessary to specify, and in further consideration of one thousand louis d’or, I being aged one year and one month, do hereby make over to the bearer of this agreement all my right, title, and appurtenance in the shadow called my soul.” (Signed) A … … (Here His Majesty repeated a name which I did not feel justified in indicating more unequivocally.)
“A clever fellow that,” resumed he; “but like you, Monsieur Bon-Bon, he was mistaken about the soul. The soul a shadow, truly! The soul a shadow! Ha! ha! ha! — he! he! he! — hu! hu! hu! Only think of a fricasséed shadow!”
“Only think — hiccup! — of a fricasséed shadow!” exclaimed our hero, whose faculties were becoming much illuminated by the profundity of his Majesty’s discourse.
“Only think of a hiccup! — fricasséed shadow!! Now, damme! — hiccup! — humph! If I would have been such a — hiccup! — nincompoop! My soul, Mr. — humph!”
“Your soul, Monsieur Bon-Bon?”
“Yes, sir — hiccup! — my soul is” —
“What, sir?”
“No shadow, damme!”
“Did you mean to say” —
“Yes, sir, my soul is — hiccup! — humph! — yes, sir.”
“Did not intend to assert” —
“My soul is — hiccup! — peculiarly qualified for — hiccup! — a” —
“What, sir?”
“Stew.”
“Ha!”
“Soufflée.”
“Eh?”
“Fricassée.”
“Indeed!”
“Ragout and fricandeau — and see here, my good fellow! I’ll let you have it — hiccup! — a bargain.” Here the philosopher slapped his Majesty upon the back.
“Couldn’t think of such a thing,” said the latter calmly, at the same time rising from his seat. The metaphysician stared.
“Am supplied at present,” said his Majesty.
“Hic-cup! — e-h?” said the philosopher.
“Have no funds on hand.”
“What?”
“Besides, very unhandsome in me —”
“Sir!”
“To take advantage of” —
“Hic-cup!”
“Your present disgusting and ungentlemanly situation.”
Here the visiter bowed and withdrew — in what manner could not precisely be ascertained — but in a well-concerted effort to discharge a bottle at “the villain,” the slender chain was severed that depended from the ceiling, and the metaphysician prostrated by the downfall of the lamp.
The End
King Pest (1835)
The gods do bear and well allow in kings
The things which they abhor in rascal routes.
Buckhurst’s Tragedy of Ferrex and Porrex.
About twelve o’clock, one night in the month of October, and during the chivalrous reign of the third Edward, two seamen belonging to the crew of the “Free and Easy,” a trading schooner plying between Sluys and the Thames, and then at anchor in that river, were much astonished to find themselves seated in the tap-room of an ale-house in the parish of St. Andrews, London — which ale-house bore for sign the portraiture of a “Jolly Tar.”
The room, although ill-contrived, smoke-blackened, low-pitched, and in every other respect agreeing with the general character of such places at the period — was, nevertheless, in the opinion of the grotesque groups scattered here and there within it, sufficiently well adapted to its purpose.
Of these groups our two seamen formed, I think, the most interesting, if not the most conspicuous.
The one who appeared to be the elder, and whom his companion addressed by the characteristic appellation of “Legs,” was at the same time much the taller of the two. He might have measured six feet and a half, and an habitual stoop in the shoulders seemed to have been the necessary consequence of an altitude so enormous. — Superfluities in height were, however, more than accounted for by deficiencies in other respects. He was exceedingly thin; and might, as his associates asserted, have answered, when drunk, for a pennant at the mast-head, or, when sober, have served for a jib-boom. But these jests, and others of a similar nature, had evidently produced, at no time, any effect upon the cachinnatory muscles of the tar. With high cheek-bones, a large hawk-nose, retreating chin, fallen under-jaw, and huge protruding white eyes, the expression of his countenance, although tinged with a species of dogged indifference to matters and things in general,