A lightning glance upon the guilty menial,
And thrice with languid voice she called her pet,
Who rushed to her embrace and seemed to invoke
Vengeance with her shrill tenor. And revenge
Thou hadst, fair poodle, darling of the Graces.
The guilty menial trembled, and with eyes
Downcast received his doom. Naught him availed
His twenty years' desert; naught him availed
His zeal in secret services; for him
In vain were prayer and promise; forth he went,
Spoiled of the livery that till now had made him
Enviable with the vulgar. And in vain
He hoped another lord; the tender dames
Were horror-struck at his atrocious crime,
And loathed the author. The false wretch succumbed
With all his squalid brood, and in the streets
With his lean wife in tatters at his side
Vainly lamented to the passer-by.

It would be quite out of taste for the lover to sit as apathetic as
the husband in the presence of his lady's guests, and he is to mingle
gracefully in the talk from time to time, turning it to such topics
as may best serve to exploit his own accomplishments. As a man of the
first fashion, he must be in the habit of seeming to have read Horace
a little, and it will be a pretty effect to quote him now; one may
also show one's acquaintance with the new French philosophy, and
approve its skepticism, while keeping clear of its pernicious
doctrines, which insidiously teach--

That every mortal is his fellow's peer;