"Vraiment Milor treats de subject en moraliste, and as if himself vas a paragon of excellence dat could not err. Pray, Milor, do you always tink so wisely on vat you do, dat you never do nothing wrong yourself?" "Oh, do wrong--yes a thousand times a day, Comtesse,--but when I do, I do not quarrel with the world because it will not think me right, nor if it call me a fool or a knave, am I angry--for perhaps it is a truth--at any rate, other and better men than I have been called the same." "It is an execrable paper," said Lady Tilney; "and ought to be burnt by the hangman." "It is an abominable ting," said the Comtesse Leinsengen, "and would not be suffered in any country but England."--Lady Tilney would have interrupted her, but the Comtesse was bent on proceeding: "I repeat, as I have often had de honor to tell you, dat de English are a people of contradictions; dey talk always of dere great _purité_,--dere _virtue_--and den suffer so quietly all dose vile tings to be said of dem in de public prints." Lord Gascoigne, who did not care one straw what was said either of himself or any one else, perceiving he had sufficiently fanned the growing indignation of Lady Tilney by his apparent callousness to public attack, for a moment remained silent, amused to hear the topic discussed in other hands. Lady Tilney loved argument, and for its sake often adopted opinions which at other times she would as strongly have opposed. "If the things alluded to _are done_," she continued, addressing herself to the Comtesse Leinsengen, "they are _better told_--I always like every thing to be told." "Vid de exception always, ma chere amie, of vat concerns one's-self," replied the Comtesse sharply. "But I deny that there is any truth," rejoined Lady Tilney, not appearing to notice this last remark; "I deny that there is any truth in any thing that comes through such an abominable channel as that paper; all its remarks are the offspring of impertinent malice or envious vulgarity, and all its facts, falsehoods." "Hem!" said Lord Baskerville, in his slowest and most imposing tone, "these things have always been, Lady Tilney, and always will be. Some satirist or other, (hem!) has always lived since the Flood, from Lycophron down to our own day, to lash the vice and follies of the age, as _they_ say; but in fact to indulge that spleen which is common to the canaille at all periods. And after all, what does it signify? Nobody thinks about any thing that is said of any body--hem!--nine days after it is said--hem!" "If I ever saw _my_ name in that d--d paper," exclaimed Lord Tonnerre, while his brow was knit in tremendous frowns, "if ever allusion were made to me--the writer should eat his words." "My dear Tonnerre," rejoined Lord Gascoigne, once more taking up the conversation, "you would find he has an ostrich's stomach. But why should such a toy trouble you?"