'I am too much of a courtier,' said he, 'to differ from the ladies,' and he trod on both our feet.
'A courtier!' cried I: 'I should rather have imagined you a musician.'
'Pray why?' said he.
'Because,' answered I, 'you are playing the pedal harp on this lady's foot and mine.'
'I wished to produce harmony,' said he, with a submitting bow.
'At least,' said I, 'novels must be much more true than histories, because historians often contradict each other, but novelists never do.'
'Yet do not novelists contradict themselves?' said he.
'Certainly,' replied I, 'and there lies the surest proof of their veracity. For as human actions are always contradicting themselves, so those books which faithfully relate them, must do the same.'
'Admirable!' exclaimed he. 'And yet what proof have we that such personages as Schedoni, Vivaldi, Camilla, or Cecilia ever existed?'
'And what proof have we,' cried I, 'that such personages as Alfred the Great, Henry the Fifth, Elfrida, or Mary Queen of Scots, ever existed? I wonder at a man of sense like you. Why, Sir, at this rate you might just as well question the truth of Guy Faux's attempt to blow up the Parliament-House, or of my having blown up a house last night.'