To show him a withered frost-bitten
verb, that wanted its preterite, wanted its supines, wanted, in fact,
everything in this world, fruits or blossoms, that make a verb
desirable, was to earn the Don's gratitude for life. All day long he
was marching and countermarching his favorite brigades of verbs--verbs
frequentative, verbs inceptive, verbs desiderative--horse, foot, and
artillery; changing front, advancing from the rear, throwing out
skirmishing parties, until Kate, not given to faint, must have thought
of such a resource, as once in her life she had thought so seasonably
of a vesper headache. This was really worse than St. Sebastian's. It
reminds one of a French gayety in Thiebault or some such author, who
describes a rustic party, under equal despair, as employing themselves
in conjugating the verb _s'ennuyer,--Je m'ennuie, tu t'ennuies, il
s'ennuit; nous nous ennuyons_, &c.; thence to the imperfect--_Je
m'ennuyois, tu t'ennuyois_, &c.; thence to the imperative--_Qu'il
s'ennuye_, &c.; and so on through the whole melancholy conjugation.
Now, you know, when the time comes that, _nous nous ennuyons_, the best
course is, to part. Kate saw _that_; and she walked off from the Don's
[of whose amorous passion for defective verbs one would have wished to
know the catastrophe], and took from his mantel-piece rather move
silver than she had levied on her aunt.
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