“No madman I, as well you know,” answers Angelica, “but a maid whom spurned love may yet madden.  Kiss me on the lips!”

While they struggle, another figure fills the postern, and in an instant Angelica is torn aside by Master Willie Joffers (well versed, for all his mumming, in matters of chivalry).  “Kisses for such coward lips?” cries he.  “Nay, but a swinge to silence them!” and would have struck trousered Angelica full on the mouth.  But decollete Geoffrey Dizzard, crying at him “Sweet termagant, think not to baffle me by these airs of manhood!” had sprung in the way and on his own nose received the blow.

He staggered and, spurting blood, fell.  Up go the buffo’s hands, and “Now may the Saints whip me,” cries he, “for a tapster of girl’s blood!” and fled into the night, howling like a dog.  Mistress Vandeleur had fled already.  Down on her knees goes Angelica, to stanch Geoffrey’s flux.

Thus far, straight history.  Apocrypha, all the rest:  you shall pick your own sequel.  As for instance, some say Geoffrey bled to the death, whereby stepped Master Joffers to the scaffold, and Angelica (the Vandeleur too, like as not) to a nunnery.  Others have it he lived, thanks to nurse Angelica, who, thereon wed, suckled him twin Dizzards in due season.  Joffers, they say, had wife already, else would have wed the Vandeleur, for sake of symmetry.

DICKENS

By

G**RGE M**RE

I had often wondered why when people talked to me of Tintoretto I always found myself thinking of Turgeneff.  It seemed to me strange that I should think of Turgeneff instead of thinking of Tintoretto; for at first sight nothing can be more far apart than the Slav mind and the Flemish.  But one morning, some years ago, while I was musing by my fireplace in Victoria Street, Dolmetsch came to see me.  He had a soiled roll of music under his left arm.  I said, “How are you?” He said, “I am well.  And you?” I said, “I, too, am well.  What is that, my dear Dolmetsch, that you carry under your left arm?” He answered, “It is a Mass by Palestrina.”  “Will you read me the score?” I asked.  I was afraid he would say no.  But Dolmetsch is not one of those men who say no, and he read me the score.  He did not read very well, but I had never heard it before, so when he finished I begged of him he would read it to me again.  He said, “Very well, M**re, I will read it to you again.”  I remember his exact words, because they seemed to me at the time to be the sort of thing that only Dolmetsch could have said.  It was a foggy morning in Victoria Street, and while Dolmetsch read again the first few bars, I thought how Renoir would have loved to paint in such an atmosphere the tops of the plane trees that flaccidly show above the wall of Buckingham Palace....  Why had I never been invited to Buckingham Palace?  I did not want to go there, but it would have been nice to have been asked....  How brave gaillard was Renoir, and how well he painted from that subfusc palette!...