but every day of the week,
in the daintiest manner. And now the old man was all joy and happiness.
Meanwhile a splendid supper had been served, and to this they all sate
down, in the happiest mood of mind.

In taking my leave of you, dear reader, I wish with all my heart that
the happiness which has now fallen to the lot of Salvator and all his
friends, may have glowed very brightly in your own breast, whilst you
have been reading the story of the marvellous Signor Formica.

"Now," began Lothair, when Ottmar had ended, "since our friend has
been fair and honourable enough to admit from the outset the lack of
vigour--the weakness of knee, so to speak, of his production, which it
has pleased him to call a 'Novella,' this appeal to our considerateness
does, certainly, draw the sting out of our criticisms, which were
formed up, in complete steel, to attack him. He bares his bosom to the
partizan-pike, and therefore, as magnanimous adversaries, we withhold
our thrust, and are bound to have mercy."

"More than that," said Cyprian, "to console his pain, we feel ourselves
permitted to bestow a certain limited amount of praise. For my part, I
see a good deal in this work that is pleasant and Serapiontic.
Capuzzi's broken leg, for instance, and its consequences, his
mysterious serenade----"

"Which," interrupted Vincenz, "has all the more of the real Spanish, or
the true Italian smack about it, just because it ends with a tremendous
cudgelling. No proper Novella of the kind would be complete without the
due amount of licking, and I prize it highly as, medically speaking, a
specially powerful stimulant, always employed by the best writers. In
Boccacio things hardly ever wind up without cudgelling; and where does
it rain more blows or thrusts than in the Romance of all Romances, 'Don
Quixote?' Cervantes himself considered it necessary to apologise to his
readers about it. Now-a-days intellectual ladies will have none of such
matters in connection with the mental 'teas' (which they enjoy along
with tea for the body); the honoured hide of a favourite poet--if he
would retain his footing at 'teas,' and in pocket-books--must, at
highest, be blackened by a tap or so on the nose, or the least little
box on an ear. But what of tea? What of cultivated ladies? Behold in
me, oh, Ottmar, your champion in complete armour, and cudgel soundly in
all the novels you may be thinking of writing. I praise you for the
cudgelling's sake."

"And