The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen eBook

Rudolf Erich Raspe
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 185 pages of information about The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen.

The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen eBook

Rudolf Erich Raspe
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 185 pages of information about The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen.

To correspond with this, Colossus took Guildhall and Westminster Abbey, and turning the foundations towards the heavens, so that the roofs of the edifices were upon the ground, he strung them across with brass and steel wire from side to side, and thus, when strung, they had the appearance of most noble dulcimers.  He then took the great dome of St. Paul’s, raising it off the earth with as much facility as you would a decanter of claret.  And when once risen up it had the appearance of a quart bottle.  Colossus instantly, with his teeth, cracked off the superior part of the cupola, and then applying his lips to the instrument, began to sound it like a trumpet.  ’Twas martial beyond description—­tantara
!
—­tara!—­ta!

During the concert I walked in the park with Lady Fragrantia:  she was dressed that morning in a chemise a la reine.  “I like,” said she, “the dew of the morning, ’tis delicate and ethereal, and, by thus bespangling me, I think it will more approximate me to the nature of the rose [for her looks were like Aurora]; and to confirm the vermilion I shall go to Spa.”  “And drink the Podhon spring?” added I, gazing at her from top to toe.  “Yes,” replied the lovely Fragrantia, “with all my heart; ’tis the drink of sweetness and delicacy.  Never were there any creatures like the water-drinkers at spa; they seem like so many thirsty blossoms on a peach-tree, that suck up the shower in the scorching heat.  There is a certain something in the waters that gives vigour to the whole frame, and expands every heart with rapture and benevolence.  They drink! good gods! how they do drink! and then, how they sleep!  Pray, my dear Baron, were you ever at the falls of Niagara?” “Yes, my lady,” replied I, surprised at such a strange association of ideas; “I have been, many years ago, at the Falls of Niagara, and found no more difficulty in swimming up and down the cataracts than I should to move a minuet.”  At that moment she dropped her nosegay.  “Ah,” said she, as I presented it to her, “there is no great variety in these polyanthuses.  I do assure you, my dear Baron, that there is taste in the selection of flowers as well as everything else, and were I a girl of sixteen I should wear some rosebuds in my bosom, but at five-and-twenty I think it would be more apropos to wear a full-blown rose, quite ripe, and ready to drop off the stalk for want of being pulled—­heigh-ho!” “But pray, my lady,” said I, “how do you like the concert?” “Alas!” said she, languishingly, while she laid her hand upon my shoulder, “what are these bodiless sounds and vibration to me? and yet what an exquisite sweetness in the songs of the northern part of our island:—­’Thou art gone awa’ from me, Mary!’ How pathetic and divine the little airs of Scotland and the Hebrides!  But never, never can I think of that same Doctor Johnson—­that CONSTABLE, as Fergus MacLeod calls him—­but I have an idea of a great brown full-bottomed wig and a hogshead of porter!  Oh, ’twas base! to be treated everywhere with politeness and hospitality, and in return invidiously to smellfungus them all over; to go to the country of Kate of Aberdeen, of Auld Robin Gray, ’midst rural innocence and sweetness, take up their plaids, and dance.  Oh!  Doctor, Doctor!”

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The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.