“Fichez-moi la paix,” she said, and pushing him on one side continued her perambulation.
“Art,” he continued, with a wave of the hand, “is merely the refuge which the ingenious have invented, when they were supplied with food and women, to escape the tediousness of life.”
Cronshaw filled his glass again, and began to talk at length. He spoke with rotund delivery. He chose his words carefully. He mingled wisdom and nonsense in the most astounding manner, gravely making fun of his hearers at one moment, and at the next playfully giving them sound advice. He talked of art, and literature, and life. He was by turns devout and obscene, merry and lachrymose. He grew remarkably drunk, and then he began to recite poetry, his own and Milton’s, his own and Shelley’s, his own and Kit Marlowe’s.