"I should have hoped," (said Sir Clement, with the utmost gravity) "that the friendship subsisting between that lady and gentleman, would have guarded them against any actions professedly disagreeable to each other; but, probably, they might not have discussed the matter previously; in which case, the gentleman, I must own, seems to have been guilty of inattention, since, in my humble opinion, it was his business first to have enquired whether the lady preferred soft, or hard ground, before he dropt her."
"O very fine, Gentlemen, very fine," cried Madame Duval, "you may try to set us together by the ears as much as you will; but I'm not such an ignorant person as to be made a fool of so easily; so you need n't talk no more about it, for I sees into your designs."
Monsieur Du Bois, who was just able to discover the subject upon which the conversation turned, made his defence, in French, with great solemnity; he hoped, he said, that the company would at least acknowledge, he did not come from a nation of brutes, and consequently, that to wilfully offend any lady, was, to him, utterly impossible; but that, on the contrary, in endeavouring, as was his duty, to save and guard her, he had himself suffered, ina manner
