" "Drop this persiflage and come down to business," said Browning, winking at the others and nodding toward Hartwick, who did not seem to be taking any interest in what was going on.

A new stock-law, requiring the peasantry to shut up their unicorns during certain seasons of the year and keep them out of the crops, also protecting them from sportsmen while shedding their horns in spring, or moulting, it is said, was passed, but the English historians are such great jokers that the writer has had much difficulty in culling the facts and eliminating the persiflage from these writings.

The new conditions, social and political, that followed the Revolution of 1830, helped him also; for new liberties admitted, and the new bourgeois plutocracy invited, the good-humored persiflage in which he was an easy master.