With all this learning upon Noses running perpetually in my father’s fancy⸺with so many family prejudices—and ten decads of such tales running on for ever along with them⸺how was it possible with such exquisite⸺was it a true nose?⸺That a man with such exquisite feelings as my father had, could bear the shock at all below stairs⸺or indeed above stairs, in any other posture, but the very posture I have described?
⸺Throw yourself down upon the bed, a dozen times⸺taking care only to place a looking-glass first in a chair on one side of it, before you do it—But was the stranger’s nose a true nose, or was it a false one?
To tell that beforehand, madam, would be to do injury to one of the best tales in the Christian-world; and that is the tenth of the tenth decad, which immediately follows this.
This tale, cried Slawkenbergius , somewhat exultingly, has been reserved by me for the concluding tale of my whole work; knowing right well, that when I shall have told it, and my reader shall have read it thro’—’twould be even high time for both of us to shut up the book; inasmuch, continues Slawkenbergius , as I know of no tale which could possibly ever go down after it.
’Tis a tale indeed!
This sets out with the first interview in the inn at Lyons , when Fernandez left the courteous stranger and his sister Julia alone in her chamber, and is overwritten
Heavens! thou art a strange creature, Slawkenbergius! what a whimsical view of the involutions of the heart