where no pure female presence was found to check
the bacchanalian song, or forbid the ribald jest, all
sat to listen to and applaud their host's inimitable
stories, his grotesque descriptions, his wayward
thoughts and fantastic images; to hearken to his
close analysis, his robust reasoning, his wondrous pa-
thos, his sublime exaggeration; and, as the wine cir-
culated, to observe yet more his chameleon aspect
and Protean character unfold itself; now grovelling
like the Paradisal toad, wherein, at the ear of Eve,
was hidden the form of Lucifer; now, touched by the
Ithuriel spear of some keen conception, suddenly
soaring, like to the bright expanded shape of the
surprised and fallen Archangel, till the guests them-
selves, like the startled Ithuriel recoiling from the
instant apparition of the fiend, drew back in amaze-
ment, or, as if at the jests of another Yorick, raised
over the table a long, eruptive roar. Nor was that
all. For a moment he would assume the moralist,
the theologian, or, -- leaving both revelation and the
pandects, -- become the philosopher, pacing the uni-
verse for occult truth; or the metaphysician, track-
ing the region of the supersensuous; and, over every
theme, flying on mocking mental pinions, seeming an
intellectual satan, passing through the region of vain
questionings and doubtful disquisition, dim out to the
abyss. And thus he lived, using, and abusing, his
rare gifts; no virtuous and accomplished wife presid-
ing at these feasts, ever degenerating into orgies, or
giving sanctity to these walls; within which were
gathered the brightest, gayest, noblest, most power-
ful -- often most dissolute -- of the land. But now
the guests were thinned in numbers by death, by

[[9]]

p008b _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p009w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p010

v?