'Ah! you men, you men, Eugenio!' said she (the beast's name was
John), 'your passion is not equal to ours. We are like--like some
plant I've read of--we bear but one flower and then we die!'

'Do you mean you never felt an inclination for another?' said
Captain Quin.

'Never, my Eugenio, but for thee! How can you ask a blushing nymph
such a question?'

'Darling Norelia!' said he, raising her hand to his lips.

I had a knot of cherry-coloured ribands, which she had given me out
of her breast, and which somehow I always wore upon me. I pulled
these out of my bosom, and flung them in Captain Quin's face, and
rushed out with my little sword drawn, shrieking, 'She's a liar--
she's a liar, Captain Quin! Draw, sir, and defend yourself, if you
are a man!' and with these words I leapt at the monster, and
collared him, while Nora made the air echo with her screams; at the
sound of which the other captain and Mysie hastened up.

Although I sprang up like a weed in my illness, and was now nearly
attained to my full growth of six feet, yet I was but a lath by the
side of the enormous English captain, who had calves and shoulders
such as no chairman at Bath ever boasted. He turned very red, and
then exceedingly pale at my attack upon him, and slipped back and
clutched at his sword--when Nora, in an agony of terror, flung
herself round him, screaming, 'Eugenio! Captain Quin, for Heaven's
sake spare the child--he is but an infant.'