“Well, go on,—out with it: not to say what?” said he, calmly.
I turned my shoulder towards him, and nestled down into my place.
“There's a thing, now,” said he, in a tone of the coolest reflection,—“there's a thing, now, that I never could understand, and I have never met the man to explain it. Our nation, as a nation, is just as plucky as the French,—no one disputes it; and yet take a Frenchman of your class,—the commis-voyageur, or anything that way,—and you 'll just find him as prompt on the point of honor as the best noble in the land. He never utters an insolent speech without being ready to back it.”
I felt as if I were choking, but I never uttered a word.
“I remember meeting one of those fellows—traveller for some house in the wine trade—at Avignon. It was at table d'hote, and I said something slighting about Communism, and he replied, 'Monsieur, je suis Fouriériste, and you insult me.' Thereupon he sent me his card by the waiter,—'Paul Déloge, for the house of Gougon, père et fils.' I tore it, and threw it away, saying, 'I never drink Bordeaux wines.' 'What do you say to a glass of Hermitage, then?' said he, and flung the contents of his own in my face. Wasn't that very ready? I call it as neat a thing as could be.”
“And you bore that outrage,” said I, in triumphant delight; “you submitted to a flagrant insult like that at a public table?”
“I don't know what you call 'bearing it,'” said he; “the thing was done, and I had only to wipe my face with my napkin.”
“Nothing more?” said I, sneeringly.
“We went out, afterwards, if you mean that,” said he, quietly, “and he ran me through here.” As he spoke, he proceeded, in leisurely fashion, to unbutton the wrist of his shirt, and, baring his arm midway, showed me a pinkish cicatrice of considerable extent. “It went, the doctor said, within a hair's-breadth of the artery.”
I made no comment upon this story. From the moment I heard it, I felt as though I was travelling with the late Mr. Palmer, of Rugeley. I was as it were in the company of one who never would have scrupled to dispose of me, at any moment and in any way that his fancy suggested. My code respecting the duel was to regard it as the last, the very last, appeal in the direst emergency of dishonor. The men who regarded it as the settlement of slight differences, I deemed assassins. They were no more safe associates for peaceful citizens than a wolf was a meet companion for a flock of South Downs. The more I ruminated on this theme, the more indignant grew my resentment, and the question assumed the shape of asking, “Is the great mass of mankind to be hectored and bullied by some half-dozen scoundrels with skill at the small sword?” Little knew I that in the ardor of my indignation I had uttered these words aloud,—spoken them with an earnest vehemence, looking my fellow-traveller full in the face, and frowning.