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Like many another robustious big toper, the Templar was a chicken at heart, and "to be in with Gourlay" lent him a consequence that covered his deficiency. "Yes, I'm sleepy," he would yawn in Skeighan Mart; "I had a sederunt yestreen wi' John Gourlay," and he would slap his boot with his riding-switch and feel like a hero. "I know how it is, I know how it is!"
He has drunk bumpers to the health of every member of the company; his glass has been filled scores of times by watchful waiters. So has Mr. Bayham absorbed great quantities of drink; but without any visible effect on that veteran toper. So has young Clive taken more than is good for him. His cheeks are flushed and burning; he is chattering and laughing loudly at his end of the table. Mr.
This beverage, in fact, becomes a formidable factor in the life of a Florentine winter. One finds it at all houses, and more or less mechanically drinks it. "I am turning out a terrible tea toper," said Colville, stirring his cup in front of the old lady whom his relations to the ladies at Palazzo Pinti had interested so much.
As a relief to the monotonous surface of this simple screen, various ballads and learned legends were pinned to the blanket. There might you read in verses, pathetic and unadorned, how "Sally loved a sailor lad As fought with famous Shovel!" There might you learn, if of two facts so instructive you were before unconscious, that "Ben the toper loved his bottle, Charley only loved the lasses!"
"set it down before the fire only what would have become of me while it was thawing? It's no wonder though! By the time I've been buried as long, I shall want thawing too!" The wine, however, turned out more satisfactory to the palate of the toper than to his nostrils which in truth, so much had he drunk that day, were at present incapable of doing it justice and he set himself to enjoy it.
He sometimes inspected the "ordinaries" and made complaint of any disorders which he there discovered, and gave in the names of "idle tiplers and gamers," and he could warn the tavern-keeper to sell no more liquor to any toper whom he knew or fancied was drinking too heavily.
A dainty, self-conscious swaying of the hips by a woman was to him as alluring as the glint of red wine to a toper. He would turn and follow the disappearing vision with his eyes. he would thrill as a child with the unhindered passion that was in him. He loves the thing that women love in themselves, grace. At this their own shrine, he Knelt with them, an ardent devotee.
At the end of the close we went under an arch built after the manner of those of the ancients. The trophies of a toper were curiously carved on it. On another side was store of garlic, onions, shallots, hams, botargos, caviare, biscuits, neat's tongues, old cheese, and such like comfits, very artificially interwoven, and packed together with vine-stocks.
"I should think not," Malcolm said heartily; "it is long since I tasted a glass of real Scotch spirit, and I never need an excuse for taking a glass of whatever it be that comes in my way. Not, Mistress Janet, that I am a toper.
Anyway, the alferez was accustomed to drown the sorrows of unhappy wedlock by getting as drunk as a toper. Then, when he was thoroughly intoxicated he would order his men to drill in the sun, he himself remaining in the shade, or, perhaps, he would occupy himself in beating his wife.
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