Burlesques William Makepeace Thackeray

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chateau in Normandy, out of the hunting season? The Rugantino Palace stupefies me.
Those Titians are so gloomy, I shall have my Hobbimas and Tenierses, I think, from my
house at the Hague hung over them."
"How many castles, palaces, houses, warehouses, shops, have you, Rafael?" Lord
Codlingsby asked, laughing.
"This is one," Rafael answered. "Come in."
II.
The noise in the old town was terrific; Great Tom was booming sullenly over the uproar;
the bell of Saint Mary's was clanging with alarm; St. Giles's tocsin chimed furiously; howls,
curses, flights of brickbats, stones shivering windows, groans of wounded men, cries of
frightened females, cheers of either contending party as it charged the enemy from Carfax
to Trumpington Street, proclaimed that the battle was at its height.
In Berlin they would have said it was a revolution, and the cuirassiers would have been
charging, sabre in hand, amidst that infuriate mob. In France they would have brought
down artillery, and played on it with twenty-four pounders. In Cambridge nobody heeded
the disturbance—it was a Town and Gown row.
The row arose at a boat-race. The Town boat (manned by eight stout Bargees, with the
redoubted Rullock for stroke) had bumped the Brazenose light oar, usually at the head of
the river. High words arose regarding the dispute. After returning from Granchester, when
the boats pulled back to Christchurch meadows, the disturbance between the Townsmen
and the University youths—their invariable opponents—grew louder and more violent,
until it broke out in open battle. Sparring and skirmishing took place along the pleasant
fields that lead from the University gate down to the broad and shining waters of the Cam,
and under the walls of Balliol and Sidney Sussex. The Duke of Bellamont (then a dashing
young sizar at Exeter) had a couple of rounds with Billy Butt, the bow-oar of the Bargee
boat. Vavasour of Brazenose was engaged with a powerful butcher, a well-known
champion of the Town party, when, the great University bells ringing to dinner, truce was
called between the combatants, and they retired to their several colleges for refection.
During the boat-race, a gentleman pulling in a canoe, and smoking a narghilly, had
attracted no ordinary attention. He rowed about a hundred yards ahead of the boats in the
race, so that he could have a good view of that curious pastime. If the eight-oars neared
him, with a few rapid strokes of his flashing paddles his boat shot a furlong ahead; then he
would wait, surveying the race, and sending up volumes of odor from his cool narghilly.