“Parlons d’autre chose:  sur la question d’art on ne s’entend jamais.”

When we were excited Marshall and I always dropped into French.

“And now tell me,” he said, “about this duel.”

I could not bring myself to admit, even to Marshall, that I was willing to shoot a man for the sake of the notoriety it would bring me, not because I feared in him any revolt of conscience, but because I dreaded his sneers; he was known to all Paris, I was an obscure something, living in an obscure lodging in London.  Had Marshall suspected the truth he would have said pityingly, “My dear Dayne, how can you be so foolish? why will you not be contented to live?” etc....  Such homilies would have been maddening; he was successful, I was not; I knew there was not much in him, un feu de paille, no more, but what would I not have done and given for that feu de paille?  So I was obliged to conceal my real motives for desiring a duel, and I spoke strenuously of the gravity of the insult and the necessity of retribution.  But Marshall was obdurate.  “Insult?” he said.  “He hit you with his hand, you hit him with the champagne bottle; you can’t have him out after that, there is nothing to avenge, you wiped out the insult yourself; if you had not struck him with the champagne bottle the case would be different.”

We went out to dine, we went to the theatre, and after the theatre we went home and aestheticised till three in the morning.  I spoke no more of the duel, I was sick of it; luck, I saw, was against me, and I let Marshall have his way.  He showed his usual tact, a letter was drawn up in which my friend withdrew the blow of his hand, I withdrew the blow of the bottle, and the letter was signed by Marshall and two other gentlemen.

Hypocritical reader, you draw your purity garments round you, you say, “How very base;” but I say unto you remember how often you have longed, if you are a soldier in her Majesty’s army, for war,—­war that would bring every form of sorrow to a million fellow-creatures, and you longed for all this to happen, because it might bring your name into the Gazette.  Hypocritical reader, think not too hardly of me; hypocritical reader, think what you like of me, your hypocrisy will alter nothing; in telling you of my vices I am only telling you of your own; hypocritical reader, in showing you my soul I am showing you your own; hypocritical reader, exquisitely hypocritical reader, you are my brother, I salute you.

Day passed over day:  I lived in that horrible lodging; I continued to labour at my novel; it seemed an impossible task—­defeat glared at me from every corner of that frouzy room.  My English was so bad, so thin,—­stupid colloquialisms out of joint with French idiom.  I learnt unusual words and stuck them up here and there; they did not mend the style.  Self-reliance had been lost in past failures; I was weighed down on every side, but I struggled to bring the book somehow to a close.