"Young enough to be catechised!—Will you answer me fairly?"
Louis smiled: "as my godfathers did promise and vow?"
"Have you ambition?"
"As much as ever budded the brow of young Ammon."
"Have you enterprize?"
"Else my ambition had never been avowed."
"Can you dare the world's obloquy?"
"In a noble cause, I would risk its hisses." The Duke caught him in his arms.—"By all the host of heaven," exclaimed he, "Yours is a spirit, with which mine shall have no disguises!—You know I am reported, slandered! But, on your own principle, I exult in the hooting of the mob; and I would direct your flight to the point whereon I stand, and laugh triumphant on the fools below! Mark my progress, de Montemar.—You see in Warwick, what nine-tenths of nobility are; distinguished from the crowd by nothing but their titles and extravagance. I would sooner hang like Absalom on a tree, than so pass away amongst the herd of my cotemporaries!
"My father did not understand my character; and when he died, bequeathed me doctors of law and doctors of divinity, to teach me the way I should go. They tried to break the spirit they could not bend; and often hard words, and harder usage, shook their heads as well as their canes, and pronounced me an unmanagable colt. In the very heat and tempest of my rebellion, I told them I was a Bucephalus they could not tame! And so, breaking from their bridle, wonder not I scoured the field in the very wantonness of liberty!"
Louis joined in the gay laugh of his friend, and Wharton proceeded.