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Not all of them indeed, for, though he could be witty and at times humorous, his temptations to excess in these respects were doubtless not considerable.
After all, what is it that we want with each other? what do we expect to get from each other? I remember," he said, smiling, "a witty old lady saying to me once that eternity was a nightmare to her.
You remember Sir Walter Scott's confessed passion for giving a story 'a new hat and stick. Well, there was a dance that evening, let us say, and the ladies, tired of the eternal English officer who never intends to let matters come to a head; tired of the French Canal clerk with his little friend in Alexandria; tired, perhaps, even of the witty and urbane Italian journalist, who I imagine loved his Genova la Superba, his Chianti and the keen air and heavenly blue of his Ligurian Apennines far more than he did that flat Delta full of all the half-breeds of the world the ladies waited expectantly for the return of their new inspiration from Heliopolis, where he was gone with a party in his hundred-horse-power car.
This actress was nothing to him; he thoroughly convinced himself of that important fact at least twenty times a day. She was a delightful companion, bright, witty, full of captivating character, attractively winsome, to be sure, yet it was manifestly impossible for him ever to consider her in any more serious way.
It is also a curious thing to observe how often, when the saving gift of tact is wanting, the brilliant, the witty, the ambitious, and the energetic are passed in the race of life by men who in intellectual qualities are greatly their inferiors.
They got within a hundred yards of it, and all saw it plainly, scarce believing their senses. When they could get no nearer for the wind, the captain yielded to that instinct which urges man always to kill a curiosity, "to encourage the rest," as saith the witty Voltaire. "Get ready a gun best shot in the ship lay and fire it." This was soon done. Bang went the gun.
The intellectual leadership of France in Europe was very clearly marked under Louis XV. French was unquestionably the language of the well-born and the witty as it was the favorite language of the learned all over the Continent. The reputation of Voltaire, Diderot, d'Alembert, and Rousseau, was distinctly European.
I would not tell you that I was leaving a sickroom for fear it would fill you with too great pain or too great hope." "How witty you are!" "Would you not be happy if I died?" "If you were in a dying state, somebody might have written for you Madame Lesperon or your uncle," speaking as if the persons were fabulous creatures.
The same remark applies, not only to the statues, but to the genre-groups and animal forms of which such fine examples can be seen in the Vatican Museum, and also to silver cups by "Mentor" or to bronzes of Corinth. Petronius, the coarse but witty "arbiter of taste" under Nero, mocks at the vulgar nouveau riche who imagined that the Corinthian bronzes were the work of an artist named Corinthus.
When they returned to Jutland and the sand-hills, and told all that had passed, it was remarked that Jörgen might boil over, but he was an honest pot for all that. "But not of Jutland manufacture he cannot be called a Jutlander," was Morten's witty reply. They were both young and healthy, well-grown, and strongly built, but Jörgen was the most active.
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