Loosened to smother up some ghastly pit:
There they go—whirls from a black fiery sea!
Ottima. Not me—to him, O God, be merciful!
1st Student. Attention! My own post is beneath this window, but the pomegranate clump yonder will hide three or four of you with a little squeezing, and Schramm and his pipe must lie flat in the balcony. Four, five—who’s a defaulter? We want everybody, for Jules must not be suffered to hurt his bride when the jest ’s found-out.
2nd Student. All here! Only our poet ’s away—never having much meant to be present, moonstrike him! The airs of that fellow, that Giovacchino! He was in violent love with himself, and had a fair prospect of thriving in his suit, so unmolested was it,—when suddenly a woman falls in love with him, too; and out of pure jealousy he takes himself off to Trieste, immortal poem and all: whereto is this prophetical epitaph appended already, as Bluphocks assures me,—“Here a mammoth-poem lies, Fouled to death by butterflies.” His own fault, the simpleton! Instead of cramp couplets, each like a knife in your entrails, he should write, says Bluphocks, both classically and intelligibly,—Æsculapius, an Epic. Catalogue of the drugs: Hebe’s plaister—One strip Cools your lip. Phœbus’ emul-
