"And I presume that that neat little baggage in the corner of the shop with the jimp waist and well starched cap was the fair cause of this trifling jealousy--am I right?" "Well, really, sir, your penetration is such that it serves not to deny it," said I. "If you had only arrived five minutes earlier, you would have caught me at it tooth and nail. Oh! it _was_ fine, sir. He caught me a kick in the eye unawares--French fashion you know, sir. Englishmen don't like that sort of game, it takes them by surprise; but you should have seen how I floored him with a good English blow in the chest that made him measure his length upon the ground. You should have heard what a whack his head came against the floor. It sounded for all the world like an empty cask. It will ache for him this next fortnight to come, I'll warrant." "Oh! then England _wasn't_ thrashed after all?" said he. "Not a bit of it," said I, proudly. "Well, you seem a smart lad," said he. "I don't mind giving you a job to do every morning during my stay in Paris. Suppose you come every morning to my hotel to shave me." "With pleasure, sir," said I. "Here is my address," said he, handing me a card. I read the name Lord Goldborough, Hotel ----, Rue ----, No. 25 _au premier_. I fell into a sort of stupor at the discovery that I had been shaving a real live lord, without knowing it. So taken aback was I, that I forgot to stuff his pockets with bears' grease, tooth powder, fancy soaps, hair dye, tooth and nail brushes, etc. Before I had well recovered, he was out of the shop. He had left an English paper behind him by mistake, and a letter, the former of which I perused, while the latter I placed in my pocket, to return to him on the morrow at his hotel. No sooner had my countryman left the shop than Pauline asked me if he wasn't an Englishman. "Yes," I replied, glad of an opportunity of making myself big in her eyes and of inspiring my rival with awe and respect for me; "his name is Lord Goldborough, _un grand milord_, who has known me many years, and all my family. In fact," said I, "he is distantly connected with us."--(I did not say on account of our both being descended from Adam). I told them in the shop that he had engaged my services every morning at his hotel to shave him, for old acquaintance sake, and finally that he had called on me on purpose, under the excuse of being shaved, to lend me that paper to read, where there was a long account of the great political deeds of a celebrated English minister related to us both; in fact, no less a man than the renowned William Pitt. There's no harm in making yourself as big as you can when you are sure of not being found out--eh, gentlemen?--and when you do come out with a lie, tell a good 'un whilst you're about it--that's my morality.