Think as you will; forbear to come hauling up examples of malarious men, in whom these pourings of the golden rays of life breed fogs; and be moved, since you are scarcely under an obligation to hunt the meaning, in tolerance of some dithyrambic inebriety of narration (quiverings of the reverent pen) when we find ourselves entering the circle of a most magnetic polarity.  Take it for not worse than accompanying choric flourishes, in accord with Mr. Victor Radnor and Mr. Simeon Fenellan at their sipping of the venerable wine.

Seated in a cosy corner, near the grey City window edged with a sooty maze, they praised the wine, in the neuter and in the feminine; that for the glass, this for the widow-branded bottle:  not as poets hymning; it was done in the City manner, briefly, part pensively, like men travelling to the utmost bourne of flying flavour (a dell in infinite nether), and still masters of themselves and at home.

Such a wine, in its capturing permeation of us, insists on being for a time a theme.

‘I wonder!’ said Mr. Radnor, completely restored, eyeing his half-emptied second glass and his boon-fellow.

‘Low!’ Mr. Fenellan shook his head.

‘Half a dozen dozen left?’

‘Nearer the half of that.  And who’s the culprit?’

‘Old days!  They won’t let me have another dozen out of the house now.’

’They’ll never hit on such another discovery in their cellar, unless they unearth a fifth corner.’

‘I don’t blame them for making the price prohibitive.  And sound as ever!’

Mr. Radnor watched the deliberate constant ascent of bubbles through their rose-topaz transparency.  He drank.  That notion of the dish of turtle was an inspiration of the right:  he ought always to know it for the want of replenishment when such a man as he went quaking.  His latest experiences of himself were incredible; but they passed, as the dimples of the stream.  He finished his third glass.  The bottle, like the cellar-wine, was at ebb:  unlike the cellar-wine, it could be set flowing again:  He prattled, in the happy ignorance of compulsion: 

’Fenellan, remember, I had a sort of right to the wine—­to the best I could get; and this Old Veuve, more than any other, is a bridal wine!  We heard of Giulia Sanfredini’s marriage to come off with the Spanish Duke, and drank it to the toast of our little Nesta’s godmother.  I ’ve told you.  We took the girl to the Opera, when quite a little one—­that high:—­and I declare to you, it was marvellous!  Next morning after breakfast, she plants herself in the middle of the room, and strikes her attitude for song, and positively, almost with the Sanfredini’s voice—­illusion of it, you know,—­trills us out more than I could have believed credible to be recollected by a child.  But I’ve told you the story.  We called her Fredi from that day.  I sent the diva, with excuses and compliments, a nuptial present-necklace,