第72章 Chapter XLIX.

Any man, Madam, reasoning upwards, and observing the prodigious suffusion of blood in my father's countenance,--by means of which (as all the blood in his body seemed to rush into his face, as I told you) he must have reddened, pictorically and scientifically speaking, six whole tints and a half, if not a full octave above his natural colour:--any man, Madam, but my uncle Toby, who had observed this, together with the violent knitting of my father's brows, and the extravagant contortion of his body during the whole affair,--would have concluded my father in a rage; and taking that for granted,--had he been a lover of such kind of concord as arises from two such instruments being put in exact tune,--he would instantly have skrew'd up his, to the same pitch;--and then the devil and all had broke loose--the whole piece, Madam, must have been played off like the sixth of Avison Scarlatti--con furia,--like mad.--Grant me patience!--What has con furia,--con strepito,--or any other hurly burly whatever to do with harmony?

Any man, I say, Madam, but my uncle Toby, the benignity of whose heart interpreted every motion of the body in the kindest sense the motion would admit of, would have concluded my father angry, and blamed him too. My uncle Toby blamed nothing but the taylor who cut the pocket-hole;--so sitting still till my father had got his handkerchief out of it, and looking all the time up in his face with inexpressible good-will--my father, at length, went on as follows.