a great battle in the north of Italy to Hannibal, the Carthaginian, by
this neglect alone. Now, this divine elixir gives in one moment force to
the limbs and ardour to the spirits; and taken into Hector's body at
the nick of time, would, by the aid of Phoebus, Venus, and the blessed
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