“And what pretty names, brother; there’s my own, for example, Jasper; then there’s Ambrose and Sylvester; then there’s Culvato, which signifies Claude; then there’s Piramus, that’s a nice name, brother.”

“Then there’s your wife’s name, Pakomovna; then there’s Ursula and Morella.”

“Then, brother, there’s Ercilla.”

“Ercilla! the name of the great poet of Spain, how wonderful; then Leviathan.”

“The name of a ship, brother; Leviathan was named after a ship, so don’t make a wonder out of her.  But there’s Sanpriel and Synfye.”

“Ay, and Clementina and Lavinia, Camillia and Lydia, Curlanda and Orlanda; wherever did they get those names?”

“Where did my wife get her necklace, brother?”

“She knows best, Jasper.  I hope . . .”

“Come, no hoping!  She got it from her grandmother, who died at the age of a hundred and three, and sleeps in Coggeshall churchyard.  She got it from her mother, who also died very old, and could give no other account of it than that it had been in the family time out of mind.”

“Whence could they have got it?”

“Why, perhaps where they got their names, brother.  A gentleman, who had travelled much, once told me that he had seen the sister of it about the neck of an Indian queen.”

“Some of your names, Jasper, appear to be church names; your own, for example, and Ambrose, and Sylvester; perhaps you got them from the Papists, in the times of Popery; but where did you get such a name as Piramus, a name of Grecian romance?  Then some of them appear to be Slavonian; for example, Mikailia and Pakomovna.  I don’t know much of Slavonian; but . . .”

“What is Slavonian, brother?”

“The family name of certain nations, the principal of which is the Russian, and from which the word slave is originally derived.  You have heard of the Russians, Jasper?”

“Yes, brother; and seen some.  I saw their crallis at the time of the peace; he was not a bad-looking man for a Russian.”

“By-the-bye, Jasper, I’m half inclined to think that crallis {272} is a Slavish word.  I saw something like it in a lil called ’Voltaire’s Life of Charles XII.’  How you should have come by such names and words is to me incomprehensible.”

“You seem posed, brother.”

“I really know very little about you, Jasper.”

“Very little indeed, brother.  We know very little about ourselves; and you know nothing, save what we have told you; and we have now and then told you things about us which are not exactly true, simply to make a fool of you, brother.  You will say that was wrong; perhaps it was.  Well, Sunday will be here in a day or two, when we will go to church, where possibly we shall hear a sermon on the disastrous consequences of lying.”

CHAPTER XXIV.—­THE CHURCH—­THE ARISTOCRATICAL PEW—­DAYS OF YORE—­THE CLERGYMAN—­“IN WHAT WOULD A MAN BE PROFITED?”