men of the woods?  I admit the fact.  In that case, sylvae sunt consule digna.  Two artists are well worth one consul.  All right!  Some one has flung a cabbage stalk at me, but did not hit me.  That will not stop my speaking; on the contrary, a danger evaded makes folks garrulous. Garrula pericula, says Juvenal.  My hearers! there are amongst you drunken men and drunken women.  Very well.  The men are unwholesome.  The women are hideous.  You have all sorts of excellent reasons for stowing yourselves away here on the benches of the pothouse—­want of work, idleness, the spare time between two robberies, porter, ale, stout, malt, brandy, gin, and the attraction of one sex for the other.  What could be better?  A wit prone to irony would find this a fair field.  But I abstain.  ’Tis luxury; so be it, but even an orgy should be kept within bounds.  You are gay, but noisy.  You imitate successfully the cries of beasts; but what would you say if, when you were making love to a lady, I passed my time in barking at you?  It would disturb you, and so it disturbs us.  I order you to hold your tongues.  Art is as respectable as debauch.  I speak to you civilly.”

He apostrophized himself,—­

“May the fever strangle you, with your eyebrows like the beard of rye.”

And he replied,—­

“Honourable gentlemen, let the rye alone.  It is impious to insult the vegetables, by likening them either to human creatures or animals.  Besides, the fever does not strangle.  ’Tis a false metaphor.  For pity’s sake, keep silence.  Allow me to tell you that you are slightly wanting in the repose which characterizes the true English gentleman.  I see that some amongst you, who have shoes out of which their toes are peeping, take advantage of the circumstance to rest their feet on the shoulders of those who are in front of them, causing the ladies to remark that the soles of shoes divide always at the part at which is the head of the metatarsal bones.  Show more of your hands and less of your feet.  I perceive scamps who plunge their ingenious fists into the pockets of their foolish neighbours.  Dear pickpockets, have a little modesty.  Fight those next to you if you like; do not plunder them.  You will vex them less by blackening an eye, than by lightening their purses of a penny.  Break their noses if you like.  The shopkeeper thinks more of his money than of his beauty.  Barring this, accept my sympathies, for I am not pedantic enough to blame thieves.  Evil exists.  Every one endures it, every one inflicts it.  No one is exempt from the vermin of his sins.  That’s what I keep saying.  Have we not all our itch?  I myself have made mistakes. Plaudite, cives.”

Ursus uttered a long groan, which he overpowered by these concluding words,—­

“My lords and gentlemen, I see that my address has unluckily displeased you.  I take leave of your hisses for a moment.  I shall put on my head, and the performance is going to begin.”