Page 236 - les-miserables

is Latin; it means prosper.’
Tholomyes went on:—
‘Quirites, gentlemen, caballeros, my friends. Do you
wish never to feel the prick, to do without the nuptial bed,
and to brave love? Nothing more simple. Here is the receipt:
lemonade, excessive exercise, hard labor; work yourself to
death, drag blocks, sleep not, hold vigil, gorge yourself with
nitrous beverages, and potions of nymphaeas; drink emul-
sions of poppies and agnus castus; season this with a strict
diet, starve yourself, and add thereto cold baths, girdles of
herbs, the application of a plate of lead, lotions made with
the subacetate of lead, and fomentations of oxycrat.’
‘I prefer a woman,’ said Listolier.
‘Woman,’ resumed Tholomyes; ‘distrust her. Woe to him
who yields himself to the unstable heart of woman! Woman
is perfidious and disingenuous. She detests the serpent from
professional jealousy. The serpent is the shop over the way.’
‘Tholomyes!’ cried Blachevelle, ‘you are drunk!’
‘Pardieu,’ said Tholomyes.
‘Then be gay,’ resumed Blachevelle.
‘I agree to that,’ responded Tholomyes.
And, refilling his glass, he rose.
‘Glory to wine! Nunc te, Bacche, canam! Pardon me la-
dies; that is Spanish. And the proof of it, senoras, is this: like
people, like cask. The arrobe of Castile contains sixteen litres;
the cantaro of Alicante, twelve; the almude of the Canaries,
twenty-five; the cuartin of the Balearic Isles, twenty-six; the
boot of Tzar Peter, thirty. Long live that Tzar who was great,
and long live his boot, which was still greater! Ladies, take

236 Les Miserables