 reason; and the question
being put to the doctor, he refused his company with an air of disdain. Pallet,
piqued at his contemptuous manner, asked if he would not go and see the
habitation of Pindoor, provided he was in the city where that poet lived? And
when the physician observed, that there was an infinite difference between the
men; »That I'll allow, (replied the painter) for the devil a poet ever lived in
Greece or Troy, that was worthy to clean the pencils of our beloved Rubens.« The
physician could not with any degree of temper and forbearance hear this
outrageous blasphemy, for which, he said, Pallet's eyes ought to be picked out
by owls: and the dispute rose, as usual, to such scurrilities of language and
indecency of behaviour, that passengers began to take notice of their animosity;
and Peregrine was obliged to interpose, for his own credit.
 

                                 Chapter LXVIII

Peregrine artfully foments a Quarrel between Pallet and the Physician, who fight
a Duel on the Ramparts
 
The painter betook himself to the house of the Flemish Raphael, and the rest of
the company went back to their lodgings; where the young gentleman, taking the
advantage of being alone with the physician, recapitulated all the affronts he
had sustained from the painter's petulance, aggravating every circumstance of
the disgrace, and advising him, in the capacity of a friend, to take care of his
honour, which could not fail to suffer in the opinion of the world, if he
allowed himself to be insulted with impunity, by one so much his inferior in
every degree of consideration.
    The physician assured him, that Pallet had hitherto escaped chastisement, by
being deemed an object unworthy his resentment, and in consideration of the
wretch's family, for which his compassion was interested; but, that repeated
injuries would inflame the most benevolent disposition: and although he could
find no precedent of duelling among the Greeks and Romans, whom he considered as
the patterns of demeanour, Pallet should no longer avail himself of his
veneration for the ancients, but be punished for the very next offence he should
commit.
    Having thus spirited up the doctor to a resolution from which he could not
decently swerve, our adventurer acted the incendiary with the other party also;
giving him to understand, that the physician treated his character with such
contempt, and behaved to him with such insolence, as no gentleman ought to bear:
that for his own part, he was every day put out of countenance by their mutual
animosity, which appeared in nothing but vulgar expressions, more becoming
shoe
