"Let me in!" he shouted. "I'm the only man in London besides yourself
that hasn't been pulped by the Mash-Glance."

He then began to jabber lines from the classics, and examples from the
Latin grammar.

A sudden thought occurred to me. Perhaps he might translate the
observation of the Wenus. Should I use him as an interpreter? But a
moment's reflection served to convince me of the danger of such a plan.
The Professor, already exacerbated by the study of the humanities, was
in a state of acute erethism. I thought of the curate, and, maddened by
the recollection of all I had suffered, drew the bread-knife from my
waist-belt, and shouting, "Go to join your dead languages!" stabbed him
up to the maker's name in the semi-lunar ganglion. His head drooped, and
he expired.

I stood petrified, staring at his glazing eyes; then, turning to make
for the scullery, was confronted by the catastrophic apparition of the
tallest Wenus gazing at me with reproachful eyes and extended tentacles.
Disgust at my cruel act and horror at my extraordinary habiliments were
written all too plainly in her seraphic lineaments. At least, so I
thought. But it turned out to be otherwise; for the Wenus produced from
behind her superlatively radiant form a lump of slate which she had
extracted from the coal-box.

"Decepti estis, O Puteoli!" she said.

"I beg your pardon," I replied; "but I fail to grasp your meaning."