' And the
captain delivered this slowly, with knitted brow and thoughtful face,
after the manner of the erudite and simple doctor.
'Pretty Partridges, indeed! and nice game for a parish clerk!' cried the
lady, returning. 'I wonder, so I do, when I look at him, and think of
his goings on, how he can have the assurance to sit under the minister,
and look the congregation in the face, and tune his throat, and sing the
blessed psalms.'
'You are not to wonder, Madam; believe the sage, who says, _omnibus hoc
vitium est cantoribus_.'
Devereux knew of old that the effect of Latin on Mrs. Irons was to
heighten the inflammation, and so the matron burst into whole chapters
of crimination, enlivened with a sprinkling of strong words, as the
sages of the law love to pepper their indictments and informations with
hot adverbs and well-spiced parentheses, 'falsely,' 'scandalously,'
'maliciously,' and _suadente diabolo_, to make them sit warm on the
stomachs of a loyal judge and jury, and digest easily.
The neighbours were so accustomed to Mrs. Irons' griefs, that when her
voice was audible, as upon such occasions it was, upon the high road and
in the back gardens, it produced next to no sensation; everybody had
heard from that loud oracle every sort of story touching Irons which
could well be imagined, and it was all so thoroughly published by the
good lady, that curiosity on the subject was pretty well dead and gone,
and her distant declamation rattled over their heads and boomed in their
ears, like the distant guns and trumpets on a review day, signifying
nothing.
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