You have been to see----"

"Belle-bouche--Belle-bouche: but I am not in love with her."

"Oh no--of course not," said his friend, laughing ironically.

Jacques sighed.

"She don't like me," he said forlornly.

"She's very fond of me though," said his friend. "Only yesterday--but
I am mad to be talking about it."

With which words Sir Asinus turned away his head to hide his
mischievous and triumphant smile.

Poor Jacques looked more forlorn than ever; which circumstance seemed
to afford his friend extreme delight.

"Why not pay your addresses to Philippa, Jacques my boy?" he said
satirically; "there's no chance for you with Belle-bouche, as you call
her."

"Philippa? No, no!" sighed Jacques; "she's too brilliant."

"For you?"

"Even for me--me, the prince of wits, and coryphaeus of coxcombs: yes,
yes!"

And the melancholy Jacques sighed again, and looked around him with
the air of a man whose last hope on earth has left him.

His friend chokes down a laugh; and stretching himself in the bright
spring sunshine pouring through the window, says with a smile:

"Come, make a clean breast of it, old fellow. You were there to-day?"

"Yes, yes."

"Have a pleasant time?"

"Can't say I did."

"Were there any visitors?"

"A dozen--you understand the description of visitors."

"No; what sort?"

"Fops in embryo, and aspirants after wit-laurels."

"It is well you went--they must have been thrown in the shade. For
you, my dear Jacques, are undeniably the most perfect fop, and the
greatest wit--in your own opinion--of this pleasant village of
Devilsburg."

"No, no," replied his companion with well-affected modesty; "I a fop!
I a pretender to wit? No, no, my dear Sir Asinus, you do me injustice:
I am the simplest of mortals, and a very child of innocence. But I was
speaking of Shadynook and the fairies of that domain. Never have I
seen Belinda, or rather Belle-bouche, so lovely, and I here
disdainfully repel your ridiculous calumny that she's in love with
you, you great lump of presumption and overweening self-conceit!
Philippa too was a pastoral queen--in silk and jewels--and around them
they had gathered together a troop of shepherds from the adjoining
grammar-school, called William and Mary College, of which I am an
aspiring bachelor, and you were an ornament before your religious
opinions caught from Fauquier drove you away like a truant school-boy.
The shepherds were as usual very ridiculous, and I ha