Rivoli; my name is Pelham. Your's is--" "Thornton," replied my
countryman. "I will lose no time in profiting by an offer of acquaintance
which does me so much honour."

With these and various other fine speeches, we employed the time till I
was set down at my hotel; and my companion, drawing his cloak round him,
departed on foot, to fulfil (he said, with a mysterious air) a certain
assignation in the Faubourg St. Germain.

I said to Mr. Thornton, that I would give him many reasons for fighting
after I had fought. As I do not remember that I ever did, and as I am
very unwilling that they should be lost, I am now going to bestow them on
the reader. It is true that I fought a tradesman. His rank in life made
such an action perfectly gratuitous on my part, and to many people
perhaps perfectly unpardonable. The following was, however, my view of
the question: In striking him I had placed myself on his level; if I did
so in order to insult him, I had a right also to do it in order to give
him the only atonement in my power: had the insult come solely from him,
I might then, with some justice, have intrenched myself in my superiority
of rank--contempt would have been as optional as revenge: but I had left
myself no alternative in being the aggressor, for if my birth was to
preserve me from redressing an injury, it was also to preserve me from
committing one. I confess, that the thing would have been wholly
different had it been an English, instead of a French, man; and this,
because of the different view of the nature and importance of the
affornt, which the Englishman would take. No English tradesman has an
idea of les lois d'armes--a blow can be returned, or it can be paid for.

But in France, neither a set-to, nor an action for assault, would repay
the generality of any class removed from the poverty of the bas peuple,