Cyrano. No? (Declaiming) Ballade of a duel one day fought Between a poet and a good-for-naught. The Viscount. And what may that be, if you please? Wait till I choose my rhymes - - I'm ready now. (The spectators range themselves around the fencers. My cap and cloak with courtly grace I now unsheathe my trusty sword. I warn you, ere we rest on guard, "T were better you had held your peace; Now choose where I shall hit, my lord! Ding-dong! A jangle sings my sword; You think its point may swerve? Not much! Alack! I need a rhyme for ace ; And, ere your balance is restored, I free the heart line thus! Now clutch (He announces solemnly) 5 ENVOI Prince, your defeat will be deplored. Come, find excuse for such and such! Upon the envoi's end I touch! (Amid great applause Cyrano "touches" his opponent and sheathes his sword as the Viscount is led away by his friends.) Fencing match: in fencing a smallsword or foil is used, and the aim of each fencer is to touch, be it ever so lightly, the person of his opponent. Great dexterity is often shown by skillful fencers in warding off an attack. The contest is ended as soon as one of the fencers succeeds in touching the other with the point of his sword or foil. Cyrano de Bergerac (se'rä nō de bair'zhe răc): a real character in French history of the seventeenth century. He was a dramatic poet and was also noted as a duelist. de Guiche (de gweesh). — Viscount de Valvert (vĩ count de vålvair). a shaft: a figure of speech for a witty saying. — Aristophanes (ǎrIs tof'a nēs): a Greek dramatist. In some of his plays birds and animals had parts. mistral: a cold northwest wind experienced in southern France. flouts insults. glove: a glove flung in a man's face was a challenge to fight. — ballade (băl läd ́): a form of French verse in which only three rhymes are permitted in the twenty-eight lines. Each stanza ends with the refrain, and the whole poem with the envoi. The ballade bears no resemblance to the English ballad. quatrain : a stanza having four lines. — envoi (än vwa): a final stanza, summing up or concluding the poem. — sward (sward): grass.—Scaramouche (scărȧ mouch) the buffoon or clown in old Italian plays. — drawing toward: drawing near. thrust, ward, heart line: fencing terms. - spit: a cooking utensil used in old times by kitchen boys or scullions in roasting meat before an open fire. — cut, feint: fencing terms, the meaning of which is plain. - trappings: ornaments. THE CAT BY THE FIRE LEIGH HUNT LEIGH HUNT (1784-1859) was an English essayist and poet. A blazing fire, a warm rug, candles lit and curtains drawn, the kettle on for tea, and, finally, the cat before you, attracting your attention, - it is a scene which everybody likes, unless he has a morbid aversion to cats, which 5 is not common. There are some nice inquirers, it is true, who are apt to make uneasy comparisons of cats with dogs, to say they are not so loving, that they prefer the house to the man, etc. But agreeably to the good old maxim that "comparisons are odious," our readers, we 10 hope, will continue to like what is likable in anything, for its own sake, without trying to render it unlikable from its inferiority to something else; a process by which we might ingeniously contrive to put soot into every dish that is set before us, and to reject one thing after another, 15 till we are pleased with nothing. Here is a good fireside, and a cat to it; and it would be our own fault if in removing to another house and another fireside we did not take care that the cat removed with us. The cat purrs, as if it applauded our consideration, and 20 gently moves its tail. What an odd expression of the power to be irritable and the will to be pleased there is in its face as it looks up to us! We must own that we do not prefer a cat in the act of purring, or of looking in that manner. It reminds us of the sort of smile or simmer (simper is too weak and fleeting a word) that is apt to be in the faces of irritable people when they are pleased to 5 be in a state of satisfaction. We prefer, for a general expression, the cat in a quiet, unpretending state and the human countenance with a look indicative of habitual grace and composure, as if it were not necessary to take any violent steps to prove its amiability. 10 But cats resemble tigers? They are tigers in miniature? Well, and very pretty miniatures they are. And what has the tiger himself done that he has not a right to his dinner as well as Jones? A tiger treats a man much as a cat does a mouse. Granted, but we have no reason to 15 suppose that he is aware of the man's sufferings, or means anything but to satisfy his hunger; and what have the butcher and poulterer been about, meanwhile? The tiger, it is true, lays about him a little superfluously sometimes, when he gets into a sheepfold, and kills more than he 20 eats; but does not the squire or the marquis do pretty much the same in the month of September? And so we bring our thoughts back to the fireside, and look at the cat. Poor Pussy! she looks up at us again, as if she thanked us for those vindications of dinner; 25 and symbolically gives a twist of a yawn, and a lick to her whiskers. Now she proceeds to clean herself all over, having a just sense of the demands of her elegant |