One bottle speedily yielded up the ghost, another shed more than half its
blood, before the two topers had been much more than half an hour
together--Pen, with a hollow laugh and voice, had drunk off one bumper to
the falsehood of women, and had said sardonically, that wine at any rate
was a mistress who never deceived, and was sure to give a man a welcome.
Smirke gently said that he knew for his part some women who were all
truth and tenderness; and casting up his eyes towards the ceiling, and
heaving a sigh as if evoking some being dear and unmentionable, he took
up his glass and drained it, and the rosy liquor began to suffuse his
face.
Pen trolled over some verses he had been making that morning, in which he
informed himself that the woman who had slighted his passion could not be
worthy to win it: that he was awaking from love's mad fever, and, of
course, under these circumstances, proceeded to leave her, and to quit a
heartless deceiver: that a name which had one day been famous in the
land, might again be heard in it: and, that though he never should be the
happy and careless boy he was but a few months since, or his heart be
what it had been ere passion had filled it and grief had well-nigh killed
it; that though to him personally death was as welcome as life, and that
he would not hesitate to part with the latter, but for the love of one
kind being whose happiness depended on his own,--yet he hoped to show he
was a man worthy of his race, and that one day the false one should be
brought to know how great was the treasure and noble the heart which she
had flung away.
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