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Peyrolles indulged in the privilege of a faint little laugh at this witticism of his master, but apparently the applause did not please Gonzague, who gave him a gesture of dismissal. "Send the girl to me at once," he said; and with a still more humble salute Peyrolles quitted the apartment. When Gonzague was alone he sat for a few minutes staring before him like one who dreams waking.
It may have been done by order of Pilate, who wished in this way to add point to the witticism which he had put into the inscription above the cross; or the arrangement may have been due to the Jewish officials, who followed their Victim to Golgotha and may have persuaded the soldiers to give Him this place, as an additional insult; or the soldiers may have done it of their own accord, simply because He was obviously the most notable of their prisoners.
And putting his arm through Ancrum's, he swept him away, repeating, as they walked, the substance of a letter from his precious nephew, in which the Barbizon episode as it appeared to the inhabitants of No. 7 Rue Chantal and to the students of Taranne's atelier de femmes was related, with every embellishment of witticism and blague that the imagination of a French rapin could suggest.
Not a single witticism came to his assistance, and the calm, smooth face of the ecclesiastic seemed to operate upon the fierce resolves of the facetious knight in the same manner as the human eye is supposed to awe into impotence the malignant intentions of the ignobler animals.
There was something impressive in the recollection that, during the whole of our companionship, he had never uttered one objectionable or uncharitable word, nor attempted any witticism respecting Mrs. Beaudesart.
That young man is always ready with a witticism. Then I step out and James throws open the door, and the young men raise their hats, and the new crowd says, "I wonder who that is!" and the plush and purple, and calves spring up behind, and I drive home to dinner. Now, Carrie, dear, isn't that nice? Well, I don't know how it is but things are so queer.
Miss Austen makes Emma ashamed of her witticism, however, after Mr. Knightley has lectured her for it. She sets a limit to the rights of wit, again, in Pride and Prejudice, when Elizabeth defends her sharp tongue against Darcy. "The wisest and best of men," ... he protests, "may be rendered ridiculous by a person whose first object in life is a joke."
He thumped his parcel of books down on the table and listened smilingly while my unconscious witticism was expounded. "The doctor's quite right," he said. "You'll do as you are, chick; but the Lord knows what sort of man you would make. You take his advice and let well alone." Finding him in this genial frame of mind, I ventured to explain my proposition to him and to enlist his support.
There are also in the bundle, if I rightly do remember me, sundry metricals of the humorous sort, which may be considered as really waste-failures as any tainted hams that ever were yclept Westphalias. For of all dreary and lugubrious perpetrations in print, nothing can be more desolate than laboured witticism.
The populace, mainly of the Stadholder's party, made themselves merry over the discomfited "Arminians". They hung wisps of straw as derisive wreaths of triumph over the dismantled palisade lately encircling the town-hall, disposed of the famous "Oldenbarneveld's teeth" at auction in the public square, and chased many a poor cock and hen, with their feathers completely plucked from their bodies, about the street, crying "Arme haenen, arme haenen" Arminians or poor fowls according to the practical witticism much esteemed at that period.
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