delicately to put off upon
a dead beauty what I should have ascribed to a living one. Ignorant and
unsophisticated though you claim to be, have you never heard of kisses
so ardent that such traces of them are left?--where pearly teeth have
closed upon the soft flesh, and made their mark on the white skin?"

"Memorem dente notam," interrupted the pedant, charmed to have a chance
to quote Horace.

"This explanation appears to me very judicious," Scapin said; then,
with a low bow to the pedant, "and is sustained by unquestionable if
incomprehensible authority; but the mark is so long that this nocturnal
beauty of yours, dead or alive, must have had in her lovely mouth that
famous tooth which the three Gorgon sisters owned among them, and passed
about from one to the other."

This sally was followed by a roar of laughter, and Leander, beside
himself with rage, half rose, to throw himself upon Scopin, and chastise
him then and there for his insufferable impertinence; but he was so
stiff and sore from his own beating, and the pain in his back, which was
striped like a zebra's, was so excruciating, that he sank back into his
place with a suppressed groan, and concluded to postpone his revenge to
some more convenient season. Herode and Blazius, who were accustomed
to settle such little disputes, insisted upon their making up their
differences, and a sort of reconciliation took place-Scapin promising
never to allude to the subject again, but managing to give poor Leander
one or two more digs that made him wince even as he did so.

During this absurd altercation the chariot had been making steady
progress, and soon arrived at an open space where another great
post-road crossed the one they were following, at right angles. A large
wooden crucifix, much the worse for long exposure to the weather,
had been erected upon a grassy mound at the intersection of the two
highways. A group, consisting of two men and three mules, stood at its
foot, apparently awaiting some one's arrival. As they approached, one
of the mules, as if weary of standing still, impatiently shook its head,
which was gaily decorated with bright, many-coloured tufts and tassels,
and set all the little silver bells about it ringing sharply. Although
a pair of leather blinkers, decked with gay embroidery, effectually
prevented its seeing to the right or to the left, it evidently was aware
of the approach of the chariot before the men's senses had given them
any in