"Remember them! to be sure I can. This is the way they began:


'Come in! come in! you'll not repent
The entrance money you have spent;
The wondrous mirror in this place
Reveals your future sweetheart's face.'"


"Bosh!" cried Servadac in disgust; "your verses are detestable trash."

"As good as any others, captain, squeaked through a reed pipe."

"Hold your tongue, man," said Servadac peremptorily;
"I have made another couplet.
'Lovers should, whoe'er they be,
Love in all simplicity;
Lover, loving honestly,
Offer I myself to thee.'"

Beyond this, however, the captain's poetical genius was impotent to carry him;
his farther efforts were unavailing, and when at six o'clock he reached
the gourbi, the four lines still remained the limit of his composition.




CHAPTER II