ty, kept aloof from him in the conversation,
with a remarkable shyness of distant civility, and seldom took notice of
what he said, except with a view to contradict him, or retort some of his
satirical observations. This he conceived to be the best method of
acquiring his good opinion; because the Englishman would naturally
conclude he was a person who could have no sinister views upon his
fortune, else he would have chosen quite a different manner of
deportment. Accordingly, the knight seemed to bite at the hook. He
listened to Ferdinand with uncommon regard; he was even heard to commend
his remarks, and at length drank to their better acquaintance.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

ACQUITS HIMSELF WITH ADDRESS IN A NOCTURNAL RIOT.

The Italian and the abbe were the first who began to grow whimsical under
the influence of the burgundy; and, in the heat of their elevation,
proposed that the company should amuse themselves during the remaining
part of the night, at the house of an obliging dame, who maintained a
troop of fair nymphs for the accommodation of the other sex. The
proposal was approved by all, except the Hollander, whose economy the
wine had not as yet invaded; and, while he retreated soberly to his own
lodgings, the rest of the society adjourned in two coaches to the temple
of love, where they were received by the venerable priestess, a personage
turned of seventy, who seemed to exercise the functions of her calling,
in despite of the most cruel ravages of time; for age had bent her into
the form of a Turkish bow. Her head was agitated by the palsy, like the
leaf of the poplar tree; her hair fell down in scanty parcels, as white
as the driven snow; her face was not simply wrinkled, but ploughed into
innumerable furrows; her jaws could not boast of one remaining tooth; one
eye distilled a large quantity of rheum, by virtue of the fiery edge that
surrounded it; the other was altogether extinguished, and she had lost
her nose in the course of her ministration. The Delphic sibyl was but a
type of this hoary matron, who, by her figure, might have been mistaken
for the consort of Chaos, or mother of Time. Yet there was something
meritorious in her appearance, as it denoted her an indefatigable
minister to the pleasure of mankind, and as it formed an agreeable
contrast with the beauty and youth of the fair damsels that wantoned in
her train. It resembled those discords in music, which, properly
disposed, c