"And why not, my friend? Why not, if you please? Is this Haggard, this English Adonis of yours, with the manners of a prize-fighter, is he to _croquer_ all to himself all the pretty girls of Rome? Is it not enough that he shall have the prettiest wife in Rome? No, I wrong that angel, the most beautiful and the most virtuous of her sex. Is it not enough that this man shall every morning sit down to breakfast with the lovely Mees Lucy? Ah! when I think of Mees Lucy, I remember myself once more, and I think of those happy days in the Quartier Latin, before my uncle does me the honour to die, and I embark myself in the diplomatic career. I study your language in your Dickens, in your Thackeray; at last I attain proficiency. You see it for yourself, no Englishman ever shall suspect me, when we shall converse, of being other than a Briton. It is the same thing with the charming Mees Lucy. I, a Frenchman, feel my heart beat in sympathy with hers; she is to me a _compatriote_. We speak to each other as I used to speak to Cascadette in those old happy times. _Vlan ça y est._ This Haggard of yours he shall have his most beautiful wife, her most lovely cousin, but what shall he want with this little shepherdess in the blue domino. Bah," said the indignant man as he stamps his foot and settles himself down into his enormous collar, "I say he _shall_ introduce me. Think you, my friend, that I fear this 'la-out?' No, I am of the first force, my Shirtings, at the _savate_." "What's that?" said Lord Spunyarn stolidly. "My friend, _nous autres_, we do not box like you, but we use the _savate_. Behold, then, what is the _savate_." And here M. Barbiche suddenly threw himself into the attitude of an enraged and aggressive monkey. "A ruffian, he strike me, P-r-r-r-r-r," and here M. Barbiche sprang suddenly high in air, and with one adroit and well-directed kick knocked off the hat of the astonished Spunyarn. In the tohu bohu at Papayani's this singular action of M. Barbiche excited not the slightest surprise; he simply received a vociferous round of applause from the bystanders in his immediate neighbourhood. Excited by the success of his achievement, Barbiche for the moment forgot the Embassy, the Duc de la Houspignolle, and the proprieties; he had been wound up by Papayani's music, and by more than one glass of Papayani's champagne. The Frenchman became for the moment once more Le petit Furibon, the darling of the Closerie de Lilas, the champion of the Quartier Latin, the Elisha upon whose worthy shoulders had descended the mantle of the prophet, the vanished Caouchouc.