"And here's the money for it," Mr. Bungay said, laying down a five-pound note. "I'm as good as my word, I am. When I say I'll pay, I pay."
"Faith that's more than some of us can say," said Shandon, and he eagerly clapped the note into his pocket.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
WHICH IS PASSED IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD OF LUDGATE HILL.
Our imprisoned captain announced, in smart and emphatic language in his prospectus, that the time had come at last when it was necessary for the gentlemen of England to band together in defense of their common rights and their glorious order, menaced on all sides by foreign revolutions, by intestine radicalism, by the artful calumnies of mill-owners and cotton-lords, and the stupid hostility of the masses whom they gulled and led. "The ancient monarchy was insulted," the captain said, "by a ferocious republican rabble. The Church was deserted by envious dissent, and undermined by stealthy infidelity. The good institutions, which had made our country glorious, and the name of English Gentleman the proudest in the world, were left without defense, and exposed to assault and contumely from men to whom no sanctuary was sacred, for they believed in nothing holy; no history venerable, for they were too ignorant to have heard of the past; and no law was binding which they were strong enough to break, when their leaders gave the signal for plunder. It was because the kings of France mistrusted their gentlemen," Mr. Shandon remarked, "that the monarchy of Saint Louis went down: it was because the people of England still believed in their gentlemen, that this country encountered and overcame the greatest enemy a nation ever met: it was because we were headed by gentlemen that the Eagles retreated before us from the Douro to the Garonne: it was a gentleman who broke the line at Trafalgar, and swept the plain of Waterloo."
Bungay nodded his head in a knowing manner, and winked his eyes when the captain came to the Waterloo passage: and Warrington burst out laughing.