rnal, and
was especially great in his hatred of l'infame Angleterre. Delenda est
Carthago was tattooed beneath his shirt-sleeves. Fifine and Clarisse,
young milliners of the students' district, had punctured this terrible
motto on his manly right arm. Le leopard, emblem of England, was his
aversion; he shook his fist at the caged monster in the Garden of
Plants. He desired to have "Here lies an enemy of England" engraved upon
his early tomb. He was skilled at billiards and dominoes, adroit in
the use of arms, of unquestionable courage and fierceness. Mr. Jones of
England was afraid of M. de Castillonnes, and cowered before his scowls
and sarcasms. Captain Blackball, the other English aide-de-camp of the
Duchesse d'Ivry, a warrior of undoubted courage, who had been "on the
ground" more than once, gave him a wide berth, and wondered what the
little beggar meant when he used to say, "Since the days of the Prince
Noir, monsieur, my family has been at feud with l'Angleterre!" His
family were grocers at Bordeaux, and his father's name was M. Cabasse.
He had married a noble in the revolutionary times; and the son at
Paris himself himself Victor Cabasse de Castillonnes; then Victor C. de
Castillonnes; then M. de Castillonnes. One of the followers of the
Black Prince had insulted a lady of the house of Castillonnes, when
the English were lords of Guienne; hence our friend's wrath against the
Leopard. He had written, and afterwards dramatised a terrific legend
describing the circumstances, and the punishment of the Briton by a
knight of the Castillonnes family. A more awful coward never existed
in a melodrama than that felon English knight. His blanche-fille, of
course, died of hopeless love for the conquering Frenchman, her father's
murderer. The paper in which the feuilleton appeared died at the sixth
number of the story. The theatre of the Boulevard refused the drama;
so the author's rage against l'infame Albion was yet unappeased. On
beholding Miss Newcome, Victor had fancied a resemblance between her and
Agnes de Calverley, the blanche Miss of his novel and drama, and cast
an eye of favour upon the young creature. He even composed verses in her
honour (for I presume that the "Miss Betti" and the Princess Crimhilde
of the poems which he subsequently published, were no other than Miss
Newcome, and the Duchess, her rival). He had been one of the lucky
gentlemen who had danced with Ethel on the previous evening. On the
occasion o