But for my part I think not so: almost as if the party-spirit influence of my christian name, Attila, had passed into me more strongly than was proper, I feel myself impelled still farther to prove my courageousness; which, dearest Friends! I shall here in a few lines again do. This proof I could manage by mere inferences and learned citations. For example, if Galen remarks that animals with large hind-quarters are timid, I have nothing to do but turn round, and show the enemy my back, and what is under it, in order to convince him that I am not deficient in valour, but in flesh. Again, if by well-known experiences it has been found that flesh-eating produces courage, I can evince, that in this particular I yield to no officer of the service; though it is the habit of these gentlemen not only to run up long scores of roast-meat with their landlords, but also to leave them unpaid, that so at every hour they may have an open document in the hands of the enemy himself (the landlord), testifying that they have eaten their own share (with some of other people's too), and so put common butcher's-meat on a War-footing, living not like others _by_ bravery, but _for_ bravery. As little have I ever, in my character of chaplain, shrunk from comparison with any officer in the regiment, who may be a true lion, and so snatch every sort of plunder, but yet, like this King of the Beasts, is afraid of _fire_; or who,--like King James of England, that scampered off at sight of drawn swords, yet so much the more gallantly, before all Europe, went out against the storming Luther with book and pen,[2]--does, from a similar idiosyncrasy, attack all warlike armaments, both by word and writing. And here I recollect with satisfaction a brave sub-lieutenant, whose confessor I was (he still owes me the confession-money), and who, in respect of stout-heartedness, had in him perhaps something of that Indian dog which Alexander had presented to him, as a sort of Dog-Alexander. By way of trying this crack dog, the Macedonian made various heroic or heraldic beasts be let loose against him: first a stag; but the dog lay still: then a sow; he lay still: then a bear; he lay still. Alexander was on the point of condemning him; when a lion was let forth: the dog rose, and tore the lion in pieces. So likewise the sub-lieutenant. A challenger, a foreign enemy, a Frenchman, are to him only stag, and sow, and bear, and he lies still in his place; but let his oldest enemy, his creditor, come and knock at his gate, and demand of him actual smart-money for long bygone pleasures, thus presuming to rob him both of past and present; the sub-lieutenant rises, and throws his creditor down stairs. I, alas, am still standing by the sow; and thus, naturally enough, misunderstood. [Note 86: Very true! In youth we love and enjoy the most ill-assorted friends, perhaps more than, in old age, the best-assorted.]