[Westward Ho! by Charles Kingsley]@TWC D-Link bookWestward Ho! CHAPTER III 10/20
I'll tell you.
It was in some tavern; I and George Drake had gone in, and there sat this Frenchman, with his sword on the table, ready for a quarrel (I found afterwards he was a noted bully), and begins with us loudly enough about this and that; but, after awhile, by the instigation of the devil, what does he vent but a dozen slanders against her majesty's honor, one atop of the other? I was ashamed to hear them, and I should be more ashamed to repeat them." "I have heard enough of such," said Frank.
"They come mostly through lewd rascals about the French ambassador, who have been bred (God help them) among the filthy vices of that Medicean Court in which the Queen of Scots had her schooling; and can only perceive in a virtuous freedom a cloak for licentiousness like their own.
Let the curs bark; Honi soit qui mal y pense is our motto, and shall be forever." "But I didn't let the cur bark; for I took him by the ears, to show him out into the street.
Whereon he got to his sword, and I to mine; and a very near chance I had of never bathing on the pebble ridge more; for the fellow did not fight with edge and buckler, like a Christian, but had some newfangled French devil's device of scryming and foining with his point, ha'ing and stamping, and tracing at me, that I expected to be full of eyelet holes ere I could close with him." "Thank God that you are safe, then!" said Frank.
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