Nesta listened, inquired, commented, laughed; the ladies could not have a doubt that she was interested and understood.  She would have sketches of scenes between Delphica and M. Falarique, with whom the young Germania was cleverly ingenuous indeed—­a seminary Celimene; and between Delphica and M. Mytharete, with whom she was archaeological, ravishingly amoebaean of Homer.  Dr. Gannius holds a trump card in his artless daughter, conjecturally, for the establishment of the language of the gutturals in the far East.  He has now a suspicion, that the inventive M. Falarique, melted down to sobriety by misfortune, may some day startle their camp by the cast of more than a crow into it, and he is bent on establishing alliances; frightens the supple Signor Jeridomani to lingual fixity; eulogizes Football, with Dr. Bouthoin; and retracts, or modifies, his dictum upon the English, that, ’masculine brawn they have in their bodies, but muscle they have not in their feminine minds’; to exalt them, for a signally clean, if a dense, people:  ’Amousia, not Alousia, is their enemy:’—­How, when we have the noblest crop of poets?  ’You have never heartily embraced those aliens among you until you learnt from us, that you might brag of them.’—­Have they not endowed us with the richest of languages?  ’The words of which are used by you, as old slippers, for puns.’  Mr. Semhians has been superciliously and ineffectively punning in foreign presences:  he and his chief are inwardly shocked by a new perception; What if, now that we have the populace for paymaster, subservience to the literary tastes of the populace should reduce the nation to its lowest mental level, and render us not only unable to compete with the foreigner, but unintelligible to him, although so proudly paid at home!  Is it not thus that nations are seen of the Highest to be devouring themselves?

‘For,’ says Dr. Gannius, as if divining them, ’this excessive and applauded productiveness, both of your juvenile and your senile, in your modern literature, is it ever a crop?  Is it even the restorative perishable stuff of the markets?  Is it not rather your street-pavement’s patter of raindrops, incessantly in motion, and as fruitful?’ Mr. Semhians appeals to Delphica.  ‘Genius you have,’ says she, stiffening his neck-band, ’genius in superabundance’:—­he throttles to the complexion of the peony:—­’perhaps criticism is wanting.’  Dr. Gannius adds:  ’Perhaps it is the drill-sergeant everywhere wanting for an unrivalled splendid rabble!’

Colney left the whole body of concurrents on the raised flooring of a famous New York Hall, clearly entrapped, and incited to debate before an enormous audience, as to the merits of their respective languages.  ‘I hear,’ says Dr. Bouthoin to Mr. Semhians (whose gape is daily extending), ‘that the tickets cost ten dollars!’

There was not enough of Delphicafor Nests.

Colney asked:  ‘Have you seen any of our band?’