"Who wrote those lines? Answer, or I'll break up your shop--ay! break it up with your own sign-board. At the Sign of the Woman--at the Sign of the Strumpet! Answer me, you lickspittle vermin, answer me." Charles had now seized his wretched publisher by the neck-band, and shook him so roughly that the latter, fearing for his teeth, the most extravagant purchase in his mean little life, began to whine. "A gentleman--a gentleman----" "Well, you misbegotten toad, I never supposed 'twas a midwife." "No, certainly not, Mr. Lovely, a gentleman--a gentleman." "His name, dog." "I don't know." "Yes, you do, answer will you." "He told me 'twas Amor." "I knew it, I knew it, you sneaking son of a b----, and he gave you twenty guineas to print the verses." "No, not twenty, only ten, Mr. Lovely, on my soul." "On your soul! H---- l take your soul! Why you were spawned in a ditch, you viper. So you let my honour go for ten guineas. Give them to me." "Oh! Mr. Lovely." "Give them to me." The miserable little old young man produced the money, unluckily for himself, in paper. "Now since you love money so dearly, by heaven, you shall eat money." And Mr. Lovely, making a bolus of the bribe, crammed it down the reluctant bookseller's throat with his own ruler. Then our hero walked out of the shop. I hope you will not deny this scene was in the true vein of heroism. Aye! aye! 'tis full of bombast as you very properly observe, ma'am or sir; but that is the part of a hero. He must follow the Prince of Denmark's directions to the players. Aye! aye! and 'tis full of wind, but so was the great Montgolfier balloon, and surely every aeronaut is a hero, even in his descents at the tail-end of a parachute. So pray judge Mr. Lovely, not as a man, but as a hero, for I think you'll do me the justice to admit I never tried to conceal his position. But he owes the villain a considerable sum of money. Of course he does, and this awkward fact is perplexing him very much indeed as he strides down Curtain High Street. To tell the truth, when he emerged from Mr. Virgin's shop, he found that when the Fates dipped him into Styx, they made the same mistake as Madame Thetis, with this difference, that, whereas Achilles was left with a vulnerable heel, our hero preserved a vulnerable conscience. It would have been mighty heroick to march into the _Blue Boar_, run Mr. Vernon through the lungs, wed the injured heroine and tread after death the golden fields of Elysium; but his silly conscience would not allow him to kill a man to whom he was under a monetary obligation.