encountered the
shrug, and he would have it a verbal matter. M. d'Orbec gravely recited the
programme of the country party in France. M. Livret carried the war across
Channel. You English have retired from active life, like the exhausted author,
to turn critic - the critic that sneers: unless we copy you abjectly we are
execrable. And what is that sneer? Materially it is an acrid saliva, withering
where it drops; in the way of fellowship it is a corpse-emanation. As to wit,
the sneer is the cloak of clumsiness; it is the Pharisee's incense, the
hypocrite's pity, the post of exaltation of the fat citizen, etc.; but, said M.
Livret, the people using it should have a care that they keep powerful: they
make no friends. He terminated with this warning to a nation not devoid of
superior merit. M. d'Orbec said less, and was less consoled by his outburst.
    In the opinion of Mr. Vivian Ducie, present at the discussion, Beauchamp
provoked the lash; for, in the first place, a beautiful woman's apparent
favourite should be particularly discreet in all that he says: and next, he
should have known that the Gallic shrug over matters political is volcanic - it
is the heaving of the mountain, and, like the proverbial Russ, leaps up Tartarly
at a scratch. Our newspapers also had been flea-biting M. Livret and his
countrymen of late; and, to conclude, over in old England you may fly out
against what you will, and there is little beyond a motherly smile, a nurse's
rebuke, or a fool's rudeness to answer you. In quick-blooded France you have
whip for whip, sneer, sarcasm, claw, fang, tussle, in a trice; and if you choose
to comport yourself according to your insular notion of freedom, you are bound
to march out to the measured ground at an invitation. To begin by saying that
your principles are opposed to it, naturally excites a malicious propensity to
try your temper.
    A further cause, unknown to Mr. Ducie, of M. Livret's irritation was, that
Beauchamp had vexed him on a subject peculiarly dear to him. The celebrated
Château Dianet was about to be visited by the guests at Tourdestelle. In common
with some French philosophers and English matrons, he cherished a sentimental
sad enthusiasm for royal concubines; and when dilating upon one among them, the
ruins of whose family's castle stood in the neighbourhood - Agnès,