“Ah, you know the great world? so did I in my time, Mr. Brummell. I have had the visiting tickets of half the nobility at my lodgings in Bond Street. But they left me there no more cared for than last year's calendar,” sighed Mr. Sterne. “I wonder who is the mode in London now? One of our late arrivals, my Lord Macaulay, has prodigious merit and learning, and, faith, his histories are more amusing than any novels, my own included.”
“Don't know, I'm sure not in my line. Pick this bone of chicken,” says Mr. Brummell, trifling with a skeleton bird before him.
“I remember in this city of Calais worse fare than you bird,” said old Mr. Eustace of Saint Peter's. “Marry, sirs, when my Lord King Edward laid siege to us, lucky was he who could get a slice of horse for his breakfast, and a rat was sold at the price of a hare.”
“Hare is coarse food, never tasted rat,” remarked the Beau. “Table-d'hote poor fare enough for a man like me, who has been accustomed to the best of cookery. But rat--stifle me! I couldn't swallow that: never could bear hardship at all.”
“We had to bear enough when my Lord of England pressed us. 'Twas pitiful to see the faces of our women as the siege went on, and hear the little ones asking for dinner.”
“Always a bore, children. At dessert, they are bad enough, but at dinner they're the deuce and all,” remarked Mr. Brummell.
Messire Eustace of St. Peter's did not seem to pay much attention to the Beau's remarks, but continued his own train of thought as old men will do.
“I hear,” said he, “that there has actually been no war between us of France and you men of England for wellnigh fifty year. Ours has ever been a nation of warriors. And besides her regular found men-at-arms, 'tis said the English of the present time have more than a hundred thousand of archers with weapons that will carry for half a mile. And a multitude have come amongst us of late from a great Western country, never so much as heard of in my time--valiant men and great drawers of the long bow, and they say they have ships in armor that no shot can penetrate. Is it so? Wonderful; wonderful! The best armor, gossips, is a stout heart.”
“And if ever manly heart beat under shirt-frill, thine is that heart, Sir Eustace!” cried Mr. Sterne, enthusiastically.