"You come of an obstinate stock, Lawrence," he continued; "but I was misled to believe that you had missed the inheritance."
"It was out of my power to accept the cornetcy," I returned, "even had I wished it For I am a Papist."
"You would not have found yourself alone," he said, with a laugh. "The Duke of Ormond prefers Papists for his officers. He showed me a list not so long ago of twenty-seven colonels whom he had a mind to break, and strangely enough they were all Protestants, with never a fault besides to their names."
"Moreover," I went on, "I was too poor;" and there I think I hit the true and chief reason, though I would not acknowledge it as such even to myself.
"But you have an uncle in Cumberland," said Bolingbroke.
"He is a Whig and a Protestant," I replied. "He can hardly hold me in that esteem which would give me warrant to approach him."
My kinsman nodded his head as though he approved the argument, and sat for a little silent over his wine, while my fancies went straying over imagined battle-fields. It is strange how a man will glorify this business of cutting throats, the more particularly if he be of a sedentary life. Most like it is for that very reason. I have seen something of a war's realities since then; I have seen men turned to beasts by hunger and thirst, and the lust of carnage; I have seen the dead stripped and naked upon the hillside of Clifton moor white like a flock of sheep. But at the time of which I write I thought only of a battlefield as of a place where life throbbed at its fullest to a sound of resonant trumpets and victorious shouts; and the smoke of cannon hid the trampled victims, even from my imaginings.
"Come!" said Lord Bolingbroke, breaking in upon my reflections of a sudden; "if your afternoon is not disposed of, I would gladly take a turn with you. I have it in my mind to show you a picture."
I agreed willingly enough to the proposal, and together we went down into the street.
"This will be our way," he said; and we walked to the monastery of the Chartreux. Then he stopped.