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CHAPTER XXII.

IT NEVER RAINS BUT IT POURS.

Rapidly as Mr. Schnackenberger drove through the gates, he was arrested by the voice of the warder, who cited him to instant attendance at the town-hall. Within the memory of man, this was the first time that any business had been transacted on a holiday; an extraordinary sitting was now being held; and the prisoner under examination was—-Juno. ‘Oh! heaven and its mercies! when will my afflictions cease?’ said the exhausted student; ‘when shall I have a respite?’ Respite there could be none at present; for the case was urgent; and, unless Juno could find good bail, she was certain of being committed on three very serious charges of 1. trespass; 2. assault and battery; 3. stealing in a dwelling-house. The case was briefly this: Juno had opened so detestable an overture of howling on her master’s departure for the forest, that the people at the Double-barrelled Gun, out of mere consideration for the city of B—-, had found it necessary to set her at liberty; whereupon, as if the devil drove her, forthwith the brute had gone off in search of her old young enemy the kitten, at the hotel of the princess. She beat up the kitten’s quarters again; and again she drove in the enemy pell-mell into her camp in the kitchen. The young mistress of the kitten, out of her wits at seeing her darling’s danger, had set down a pail of milk, in which she was washing a Brussels’ veil and a quantity of Mechlin lace belonging to the princess–and hurried her kitten into a closet. In a moment she returned, and found–milk, Brussels’ veil, Mechlin lace, vanished–evaporated into Juno’s throat, ‘abiit–evasit–excessit–erupit!’ only the milk-pail, upon some punctilio of delicacy in Juno, was still there; and Juno herself stood by, complacently licking her milky lips, and expressing a lively satisfaction with the texture of Flanders’ manufactures. The princess, vexed at these outrages on her establishment, sent a message to the town-council, desiring that banishment for life might be inflicted on a dog of such revolutionary principles, whose presence (as she understood) had raised a general consternation throughout the city of B—-.

Mr. Mayor, however, had not forgotten the threatened report of a certain retreat to a bell, illustrated by wood-cuts; and therefore, after assuring her Highness of his readiness to serve her, he added, that measures would be adopted to prevent similar aggressions–but that unhappily, from peculiar circumstances connected with this case, no further severities could be inflicted. Meantime, while this note was writing, Juno had contrived to liberate herself from arrest.

Scarce had she been absent three minutes, when in rushed to the town-council the eternal enemy of the Mayor–Mr. Deputy Recorder. The large goose’s liver, the largest, perhaps, that for some centuries had been bred and born in B—-, and which was destined this very night to have solemnised the anniversary of Mrs. Deputy Recorder’s birth; this liver, and no other, had been piratically attacked, boarded, and captured, in the very sanctuary of the kitchen, ‘by that flibustier (said he) that buccaneer–that Paul Jones of a Juno.’ Dashing the tears from his eyes, Mr. Deputy Recorder went on to perorate; ‘I ask,’ said he, ‘whether such a Kentucky marauder ought not to be outlawed by all nations, and put to the ban of civilised Europe? If not’–and then Mr. Deputy paused for effect, and struck the table with his fist–‘if not, and such principles of Jacobinism and French philosophy are to be tolerated; then, I say, there is an end to social order and religion: Sansculotterie, Septemberising, and red night-caps, will flourish over once happy Europe; and the last and best of kings, and our most shining lights, will follow into the same bottomless abyss, which has already swallowed up (and his voice faltered)–my liver.’

‘Lights and liver!’ said Mr. Schnackenberger; ‘I suppose you mean liver and lights; but, lord! Mr. Recorder, what a bilious view you take of the case! Your liver weighs too much in this matter; and where that happens, a man’s judgment is sure to be jaundiced.’