Tietjens had hitherto flattered himself that he could examine a subject swiftly and put it away in his mind. To the General he hardly listened. The allegations against himself were beastly; but he could usually ignore allegations against himself and he imagined that if he said no more about them he would himself hear no more. If there were, in clubs and places where men talk, unpleasant rumours as to himself he preferred it to be thought that he was the rip, not his wife the strumpet. That was normal, male vanity: the preference of the English gentleman! Had it been a matter of Sylvia spotless and himself as spotless as he was--for in all these things he knew himself to be spotless!--he would certainly have defended himself, at least, to the General. But he had acted practically in not defending himself more vigorously. For he imagined that, had he really tried, he could have made the General believe him. But he had behaved rightly! It was not mere vanity. There was the child up at his sister Effie's. It was better for a boy to have a rip of a father than a whore for mother! The General was expatiating on the solidity of a squat castle, like a pile of draughts, away to the left, in the sun, on the flatness. He was saying that we didn't build like that nowadays. Tietjens said: "You're perfectly wrong, General. All the castles that Henry VIII. built in 1543 along this coast are mere monuments of jerry-building. . . . '_In 1543 jactat castra Delis, Sandgatto, Reia, Hastingas Henricus Rex_' . . . That means he chucked them down . . ." The General laughed: "You are an incorrigible fellow. . . . If ever there's any known, certain fact . . ." "But go and _look_ at the beastly things," Tietjens said. "You'll see they've got just a facing of Caen stone that they tide-floated here, and the fillings-up are just rubble, any rubbish. . . . Look here! It's a known certain fact, isn't it, that your eighteen-pounders are better than the French seventy-fives. They tell us so in the House, on the hustings, in the papers: the public believes it. . . . But would you put one of your tin-pot things firing--what is it?--four shells a minute?--with the little bent pins in their tails to stop the recoil--against their seventy-fives with the compressed-air cylinders. . . ." The General sat stiffly upon his cushions: "That's different," he said. "How the devil do you get to know these things?" "It isn't different," Tietjens said, "it's the same muddle-headed frame of mind that sees good building in Henry VIII. as lets us into wars with hopelessly antiquated field guns and rottenly inferior ammunition. You'd fire any fellow on your staff who said we could stand up for a minute against the French." "Well, anyhow," the General said, "I thank heaven you're not on my staff for you'd talk my hind leg off in a week. It's perfectly true that the public . . ."