n for it, I
assure you I have no more than for a long High Church sermon.'

'You speak a la Margutte,' said I.

'Margutte!' said the man in black, musingly, 'Margutte!'

'You have read Pulci, I suppose?' said I.

'Yes, yes,' said the man in black, laughing; 'I remember.'

'He might be rendered into English,' said I, 'something in this style:

'To which Margutte answered with a sneer,
I like the blue no better than the black,
My faith consists alone in savoury cheer,
In roasted capons, and in potent sack;
But above all, in famous gin and clear,
Which often lays the Briton on his back;
With lump of sugar, and with lymph from well,
I drink it, and defy the fiends of hell.'

'He! he! he!' said the man in black; 'that is more than Mezzofante could
have done for a stanza of Byron.'

'A clever man,' said I.

'Who?' said the man in black.

'Mezzofante di Bologna.'

'He! he! he!' said the man in black; 'now I know that you are not a
gypsy, at least a soothsayer; no soothsayer would have said that--'

'Why,' said I, 'does he not understand five-and-twenty tongues?'

'Oh yes,' said the man in black; 'and five-and-twenty added to them; but,
he! he! he! it was principally from him, who is certainly the greatest of
Philologists, that I formed my opinion of the sect.'

'You ought to speak of him with more respect,' said I; 'I have heard say
that he has done good service to your See.'

'Oh yes,' said the man in black; 'he has done good service to our See,
that is, in his way; when the neophytes of the Propaganda are to be
examined in the several tongues in which they are destined to preach, he
is appointed to question them, the questions being first written down for
him, or else, he! he! he!--Of course you know Napoleon's estimate of
Mezzofante; he sent for the linguist from motives of curiosity, and after
some discourse with him, told him that he might depart; then turning to
some of his generals he observed, "Nous avons eu ici un exemple qu'un
homme peut avoir beaucoup de paroles avec bien pen d'esprit."'

'You are ungrateful to him,' said I; 'well, perhaps, when he is dead and
gone you will do him justice.'

'True,' said the man in black; 'when he is dead and gone, we intend to
erect him a statue of wood, on the left-hand side of the door of the
Vatican library.'

'Of wood?' said I.

'He was the son of a carpenter, you know,' said the man in black; 'the
figure will be of wood for no