we in our indolence exposed ourselves to from the foreigner, particularly
from Frenchmen, whom he liked; and precisely because he liked them he insisted
on forcing them to respect us. Let his challenge be accepted, and he would find
backers. He knew the stuff of Englishmen: they only required an example.
    »French officers are skilful swordsmen,« said Mrs. Culling. »My husband has
told me they will spend hours of the day thrusting and parrying. They are used
to duelling.«
    »We,« Nevil answered, »don't get apprenticed to the shambles to learn our
duty on the field. Duelling is, I know, sickening folly. We go too far in
pretending to despise every insult pitched at us. A man may do for his country
what he wouldn't do for himself.«
    Mrs. Culling gravely said she hoped that bloodshed would be avoided, and Mr.
Beauchamp nodded.
    She left him hard at work.
    He was a popular boy, a favourite of women, and therefore full of
engagements to Balls and dinners. And he was a modest boy, though his uncle
encouraged him to deliver his opinions freely and argue with men. The little
drummer attached to wheeling columns thinks not more of himself because his
short legs perform the same strides as the grenadiers'; he is happy to be able
to keep the step; and so was Nevil; and if ever he contradicted a senior, it was
in the interests of the country. Veneration of heroes, living and dead, kept
down his conceit. He worshipped devotedly. From an early age he exacted of his
flattering ladies that they must love his hero. Not to love his hero was to be
strangely in error, to be in need of conversion, and he proselytized with the
ardour of the Moslem. His uncle Everard was proud of his good looks, fire, and
nonsense, during the boy's extreme youth. He traced him by cousinships back to
the great Earl Beauchamp of Froissart, and would have it so; and he would have
spoilt him had not the young fellow's mind been possessed by his reverence for
men of deeds. How could he think of himself, who had done nothing, accomplished
nothing, so long as he brooded on the images of signal Englishmen whose names
were historic for daring, and the strong arm, and artfulness, all given to the
service of the country? - men of a magnanimity overcast with simplicity, which
Nevil held to be pure insular English; our type of splendid manhood, not
discoverable elsewhere. A method of enraging him