“And yet I have heard your Grace indulge in the jeu de mots,” answered the attendant.
“Sirrah Jerningham,” answered the patron, “discard they memory, or keep it under correction, else it will hamper thy rise in the world. Thou mayst perchance have seen me also have a fancy to play at trap-ball, or to kiss a serving wench, or to guzzle ale and eat toasted cheese in a porterly whimsy; but is it fitting thou shouldst remember such follies? No more on’t.—Hark you; how came the long lubberly fool, Jenkins, being a master of the noble science of defence, to suffer himself to be run through the body so simply by a rustic swain like this same Peveril?”
“Please your Grace, this same Corydon is no such novice. I saw the onset; and, except in one hand, I never saw a sword managed with such life, grace, and facility.”
“Ay, indeed?” said the Duke, taking his own sheathed rapier in his hand, “I could not have thought that. I am somewhat rusted, and have need of breathing. Peveril is a name of note. As well go to the Barns-elms, or behind Montagu House, with him as with another. His father a rumoured plotter, too. The public would have noted it in me as becoming a zealous Protestant. Needful I do something to maintain my good name in the city, to atone for non-attendance on prayer and preaching. But your Laertes is fast in the Fleet; and I suppose his blundering blockhead of an antagonist is dead or dying.”
“Recovering, my lord, on the contrary,” replied Jerningham; “the blade fortunately avoided his vitals.”
“D—n his vitals!” answered the Duke. “Tell him to postpone his recovery, or I will put him to death in earnest.”
“I will caution his surgeon,” said Jerningham, “which will answer equally well.”
“Do so; and tell him he had better be on his own deathbed as cure his patient till I send him notice.—That young fellow must be let loose again at no rate.”
“There is little danger,” said the attendant. “I hear some of the witnesses have got their net flung over him on account of some matters down in the north; and that he is to be translated to the Tower for that, and for some letters of the Countess of Derby, as rumour goes.”
“To the Tower let him go, and get out as he can,” replied the Duke; “and when you hear he is fast there, let the fencing fellow recover as fast as the surgeon and he can mutually settle it.”