Toad Triumphant by William Horwood

of romantic love and the speed, arbitrariness, and frequent unreasonableness of the attachments it creates they might have recognized the symptoms even as Toad cried out his cousin’s name. For people not afflicted with the contagion of love do not cry out “Florentine!” with quite the passion, and the wild purpose Toad attached to it. Nor do they arise from their swoon, clutching their breast, and cry out, “Where is she? Carry me to her this instant for I am yet too weak to walk. Only the sight of her will restore my failing heart, and the strength to my legs.”
    And finally for good measure, when his friends were beginning to suspect the worst but had not yet gathered their wits together to take decisive action, “Let me be; I shall seek her myself Unhand me, you villains, that I may protect her from thee!”
    Such, or something like it, were among the cries and pleas, the imprecations and threats, that the love—struck Toad uttered as he recovered from his swoon.
    That he could not find Madame d’Albert was no great surprise, given his wild impatient state. She had felt that discretion and propriety indicated that his friends should tend to him rather than herself. She had no inkling then of what ailed him, and if she had done she would certainly have left Toad Hall and the River Bank, there and then.
    Meanwhile, being the enthusiastic artist that she was, she took the opportunity of the extra time offered by his collapse to engage in a different project. She requested Prendergast to assume the posture of one pouring a cup of tea that she might sketch him and positioned him at the far end of the conservatory where the light was better. But since that area was particularly thick with potted plants, it took the recovered Toad a good deal of hopping and skipping about, uttering his cries of love and hope, before he found the object of his desire.
    She spoke first.
    “So English, so typique, so ‘ow you say absolute in ‘is formality! I like your butler very much!”
    Toad eyed his man suspiciously and said, “Prendergast, have you a satisfactory explanation for watering the palms with tea?”
    “Sir, I —”
    “Then remove yourself,” said Toad impatiently “that I may talk to the Madame.”
    It was at this moment that the Badger caught up with Toad. That nightmare vision he had had when the Mole had first confessed the grave mistake he had made the day before had here and now, before his eyes, like a tropical storm coming from off the sea to devastate a peaceful land, become reality.
    “Toad,” growled the Badger in Toad’s ear, “you are in danger of making a fool of yourself”
    “Love,” cried Toad blissfully turning from the Madame to his friend, yet still reaching a hand towards the one upon whom he had set his heart, “is a fool, a happy fool, and I —”
    The Mole caught up with them and saw that the Badger was not quite handling Toad aright, and thought that he might try a different approach.
    “Toad,” he said, pleasantly but quite firmly “I do not know what has come over you but you are in danger of compromising yourself —”
    “I do not know, sweet Cousin,” cried Toad, leaping up in the air and describing a brief pirouette with an energy that was gathering momentum by the second, “what has come over me, but I am in danger —”
    The Water Rat now joined the mêlée and sought a better way of dealing with the bedazzled and besotted swain within their midst.
    “Toad,” he hissed, pulling him to one side, “if you don’t come to your senses at once then we shall have to forcibly remove you to a place of safe-keeping till you have calmed down, and you will look very foolish in the eyes of your cousin. She will lose all respect for you and I dare say will cease the sitting forthwith, and her visit here, and what is more —”
    “Ratty, old fellow, please don’t grip my arm so tight, it hurts.”
    “— we will summon the police!”
    “Not them!” cried Toad.
    “And the