It was plain that he despised me.  While any of the others were present he was abundantly loquacious, but now he was as dumb as a fish—­tippling in silence, and answering such questions as I put to him in abrupt monosyllables.  The thing was intolerable, but I saw into it:  Julia had played me false; the “Mountain” was the man of her choice, and I his despised and contemptible rival.

These ideas passed rapidly through my mind, and were accompanied with myriads of others.  I bethought me of every thing connected with Mr. Tims—­his love for Julia—­his elephantine dimensions, and his shadow, huge and imposing as the image of the moon against the orb of day, during an eclipse.  Then I was transported away to the Arctic sea, where I saw him floundering many a rood, “hugest of those that swim the ocean stream.”  Then he was a Kraken fish, outspread like an island upon the deep:  then a mighty black cloud affrighting the mariners with its presence:  then a flying island, like that which greeted the bewildered eyes of Gulliver.  At last he resumed his human shape, and sat before me like “Andes, giant of the Western Star,” tippling the jorum, and sighing deeply.

Yes, he sighed profoundly, passionately, tenderly; and the sighs came from his breast like blasts of wind from the cavern of Eolus.  By Jove, he was in love; in love with Julia! and I thought it high time to probe him to the quick.

“Sir,” said I, “you must be conscious that you have no right to love Julia.  You have no right to put your immense body between her and me.  She is my betrothed bride, and mine she shall be for ever.”

“I have weighty reasons for loving her,” replied Mr. Tims.

“Were your reasons as weighty as your person, you shall not love her.”

“She shall be mine,” responded he, with a deeply-drawn sigh.  “You cannot, at least, prevent her image from being enshrined in my heart.  No, Julia! even when thou descendest to the grave, thy remembrance will cause thee to live in my imagination, and I shall thus write thine elegy: 

    I cannot deem thee dead—­like the perfumes
      Arising from Judea’s vanished shrines
    Thy voice still floats around me—­nor can tombs
      A thousand, from my memory hide the lines
    Of beauty, on thine aspect which abode,
    Like streaks of sunshine pictured there by God.

She shall be mine,” continued he in the same strain.  “Prose and verse shall woo her for my lady-love; and she shall blush and hang her head in modest joy, even as the rose when listening to the music of her beloved bulbul beneath the stars of night.”

These amorous effusions, and the tone of insufferable affectation with which they were uttered, roused my corruption to its utmost pitch, and I exclaimed aloud, “Think not, thou revivification of Falstaff—­thou enlarged edition of Lambert—­thou folio of humanity—­thou Titan—­thou Briareus—­thou Sphynx—­thou Goliath of Gath, that I shall bend beneath thy ponderous insolence?” The Mountain was amazed at my courage; I was amazed at it myself; but what will not Jove, inspired by brandy, effect?