'You must erlaub, Sir Nugent Uffington,' said Baron Höchstadt, 'that mein gross-child is what you call very pretty.'

'I think it will be better,' said Madame de Nerval, smiling, and administering to the Baron a reproving slap, 'that we should make up our minds to talk French, which I am sure Sir Nugent Uffington speaks perfectly. I don't think, from the specimens I have heard, that you are to be trusted with English any longer.'

'You will do me the justice to say, Mélanie,' said M. Alexis Eyma, 'that during our long acquaintance you have never heard me attempt to pronounce a word of English except "jockei" and "come up." There is no language a horse understands so well; but I doubt whether it is of much use for other purposes.'

'And yet, monsieur, Shakespeare wrote in it,' said Uffington, turning towards him, 'and Walter Scott; you may possibly have heard of them?'

'As for Shakespeare, monsieur, je m'en fiche. I have read him in translation, and he is very ennuyeux; and Walter Scott was merely an inferior Dumas of the last century.'

'Let us go and find your friend Lord Forestfield, Sir Nugent,' said Madame de Nerval, interposing; 'he is in the other room, I think. Is it not curious,' she said, as she passed through the velvet portière into the antechamber, 'that that horrid little man cannot be quiet, even in the houses of friends, but must endeavour at all risks to make himself conspicuous? Nothing in the world would please him better than to force you into a duel, even upon the most ridiculous questions. He is as brave as a lion, and has been out many times.'

'I think it would be better for his own comfort,' said Uffington, with a grim smile, 'if he wishes to make an Englishman his victim, to try his hand on Forestfield rather than on me. I have had a tolerable amount of practice both with sword and pistol, and my honour would not find itself satisfied after I had given or received a simple scratch. I should kill that little man, madame, and that would pain me very much after having had the pleasure of meeting him at your house.'

Madame de Nerval looked at him with great interest. 'They told me I should find you very eccentric,' she said, 'and they certainly were not wrong. Have you been intimate with Lord Forestfield?'

'I am not at all intimate with him,' said Uffington; 'on the contrary, I never spoke to him until yesterday.'

'I am glad of that,' said Madame de Nerval, 'very glad of that. You would not have been the man I had always heard of, and, au reste, the man I take you to be, if you had been a friend of milord's.'