"Absurd," Guy retorted. "Wasn't he a heathen, and rather an immoral one? It was of profligates with far greater advantages of education that some one said, '_'Le remords nait de l'abandon, et non de la faute_.' The walls of Troy were strong then, and the Destroyer-of-ships safe behind them, 'getting herself up alarmingly' for his return. No wonder Menelaues was eager for the duel: he was staking his loneliness against Paris's nine points of the law." Sir Henry Fallowfield smiled approvingly. "Yes," he observed, not answering what had been said, but evidently following out a train of his own thought. "Modern exquisites have courage, and self-possession, and conceit--great elements of success with women, I own--but they have not much more. I am certain Charley, who is a favorable specimen of the class, often affects silence because he has nothing on earth to say. There is a decadence since my younger days (I hope I speak dispassionately), and how very far we fell short of the _roues_ of the Regence! We could no more match them than a fighting-man in good training could stand up to one of the old Pict giants. Look at Richelieu: good at all points--in the battle, in the boudoir, in the Bastille--a dangerous rival at the two ages of ordinary men's first and second childhood." "He was a great man in his way," I assented. "Do you remember his answer to the Duchesse de Maine, when she asked him, for a political purpose, if he could remain faithful for one week to an intrigue then twenty-four hours old? '_Madame, quand une fois j'embrasse un parti, je suis capable des plus grandes sacrifices pour le soutenir._' The object of that heroic constancy was the Marechale de Villars, one of the loveliest women in France. It was the sublime of fatuity--was it not?" "Well, I don't know," said Charley, settling himself comfortably in his cushions, and glancing almost imperceptibly at Bruce; "they seem to fancy us, notwithstanding. We have only one great obstacle--the mothers that _bore_ us." Be it known that "they," used simply, stood in his vocabulary for the fair sex in general. "Nonsense," replied Fallowfield; "don't be so ungrateful. You don't know what you owe to those anxious parents. It helps you enormously, being the objects of perpetual warnings from husbands and chaperons, the first considering you _mauvais sujets_, the last _mauvais partis_; for you _are_ 'detrimentals,' for the most part, you will own." "_Vetitum ergo cupitum_," interrupted Livingstone. "A good many moralists before and since old Rabelais have discoursed on that text. The Chief of Errington was probably much more agreeable, besides being a better match than Jock of Hazeldean, who clearly was what an old Frenchman lately described to me--'_un vaurien, mon cher, qui court les filles et qui n'a pas le son_.' But then poor Frank was the government candidate; so, of course, in a popular election, he went to the wall."