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SCENE -- _The Wiertz Museum at Brussels, a large and well-lighted gallery containing the works of the celebrated Belgian, which are reducing a limited number of spectators to the usual degree of stupefaction. Enter_ CULCHARD, _who seats himself on a central ottoman_.
CULCH. (_to himself_). If Podbury won't come down to breakfast at a decent hour, he can't complain if I -- -- I wonder if he heard Miss Trotter say she was thinking of coming here this morning. Somehow, I _should_ like that girl to have a more correct comprehension of my character. I don't so much mind her thinking me fastidious and exclusive. I dare say I _am_ -- but I _do_ object to being made out a hopeless melancholiac! (_He looks round the walls._) So these are Wiertz's masterpieces, eh? h'm. Strenuous, vigorous, -- a trifle crude, perhaps. Didn't he refuse all offers for his pictures during his lifetime? Hardly think he could have been overwhelmed with applications for the one opposite. (_He regards an enormous canvas, representing a brawny and gigantic Achilles perforating a brown Trojan with a small mast._) Not a dining-room picture. Still, I like his independence -- work up rather well in a sonnet. Let me see.