ing.

"They were attacking some town in the wars of the Fronde. The breach was
scarcely practicable, and the best of the besieging army had recoiled
from it with great loss. The Black Mousquetaires stood by in all the
coquetry of scarf, and plume, and fringed scented gloves, laughing
louder at each repulse of the Linesmen. The soldiers heard them and
gnashed their teeth. At last there was a murmur, and then a shout--_'En
avant les Gants Glaces!'_ They wanted to see 'the swells' beaten too.
Then the Household Brigade went up and carried the breach, leaving a
third of their number on it. The general in command made the whole army
defile past their _guidon_, and salute it with sloped standards.

"No; very few men are physical cowards in battle, whatever they may be
across country. I don't believe Paris was, when he ran from Menelaues;
and Helen did not think so, though she teased him about it, or she would
never have spoken to him again. I rather imagine his feeling was that of
a certain Guardsman of our acquaintance, who said, declining the ordeal
of combat, that 'his first duty was to his partners, and this did not
allow him to risk a black eye.'"

"Might not remorse at the sight of the man he had injured have had
something to do with his flight?" Bruce asked.

He was full of moral sentiments--that man; only you could not look at
him without fancying that they sprung more from an inclination to be
contradictious and disagreeable than from any depth of principle.

"Absurd," Guy retorted. "Wasn't he a heathen, and rather an immoral one?
It was of profligates with far greater advantages of education that some
one said, '_'Le remords nait de l'abandon, et non de la faute_.' The
walls of Troy were strong then, and the Destroyer-of-ships safe behind
them, 'getting herself up alarmingly' for his return. No wonder Menelaues
was eager for the duel: he was staking his loneliness against Paris's
nine points of the law."

Sir Henry Fallowfield smiled approvingly.

"Yes," he observed, not answering what had been said, but evidently
following out a train of his own thought. "Modern exquisites have
courage, and self-possession, and conceit--great elements of success
with women, I own--but they have not much more. I am certain Charley,
who is a favorable specimen of the class, often affects silence because
he has nothing on earth to say. There is a decadence since my younger
days (I hope I speak dispassionately), and how very far