saints, have most likely procured the Greeks a defeat. For note how
faint and weary and heart-sick I was a minute ago; well, I suck this
celestial cordial, and now behold me brave as Achilles and strong as an
eagle."

"Oh, father, now? an eagle, alack!"

"Girl, I defy thee and all the world. Ready, I say, like a foaming
charger, to devour the space between this and Rotterdam, and strong
to combat the ills of life, even poverty and old age, which last
philosophers have called the summum malum. Negatur; unless the man's
life has been ill-spent--which, by the bye, it generally has. Now for
the moderns!"

"Father! dear father!"

"Fear me not, girl; I will be brief, unreasonably and unseasonably
brief. The soupe au vin occurs not in modern science; but this is only
one proof more, if proof were needed, that for the last few hundred
years physicians have been idiots, with their chicken-broth and their
decoction of gold, whereby they attribute the highest qualities to that
meat which has the least juice of any meat, and to that metal which
has less chemical qualities than all the metals; mountebanks! dunces!
homicides! Since, then, from these no light is to be gathered, go we
to the chroniclers; and first we find that Duguesclin, a French knight,
being about to join battle with the English--masters, at that time, of
half France, and sturdy strikers by sea and land--drank, not one, but
three soupes au vin in honour of the Blessed Trinity. This done, he
charged the islanders; and, as might have been foretold, killed a
multitude, and drove the rest into the sea. But he was only the first
of a long list of holy and hard-hitting ones who have, by this divine
restorative, been sustentated, fortified, corroborated, and consoled."

"Dear father, prithee add thyself to that venerable company ere the
soup cools." And Margaret held the hat imploringly in both hands till he
inserted the straw once more.

This spared them the "modern instances," and gave Gerard an opportunity
of telling Margaret how proud his mother would be her soup had profited
a man of learning.

"Ay! but," said Margaret, "it would like her ill to see her son give all
and take none himself. Why brought you but two straws?"

"Fair mistress, I hoped you would let me put my lips to your straw,
there being but two."

Margaret smiled and blushed. "Never beg that you may command," said she.
"The straw is not mine, 'tis yours: you cut it in yonder field."

"I cu