According as you had put them.

Will you answer them now, if I attend you as far as Rome, on your return to Florence?

If they are demands fit to be answered.

Do you expect I will make any that are not fit to be answered?

My lord, I will explain myself.  You had conceived causeless prejudices against me:  you seemed inclined to impute to me a misfortune that was not, could not be, greater to you than it was to me.  I knew my own innocence:  I knew that I was rather an injured man, in having hopes given me, in which I was disappointed, not by my own fault:  whom shall an innocent and an injured man fear?—­Had I feared, my fear might have been my destruction.  For was I not in the midst of your friends?  A foreigner?  If I would have avoided you, could I, had you been determined to seek me?—­I would choose to meet even an enemy as a man of honour, rather than to avoid him as a malefactor.  In my country, the law supposes flight a confession of guilt.  Had you made demands upon me that I had not chosen to answer, I would have expostulated with you.  I could perhaps have done so as calmly as I now speak.  If you would not have been expostulated with, I would have stood upon my defence:  but for the world I would not have hurt a brother of Clementina and Jeronymo, a son of the marquis and marchioness of Porretta, could I have avoided it.  Had your passion given me any advantage over you, and I had obtained your sword, (a pistol, had the choice been left to me, I had refused for both our sakes,) I would have presented both swords to you, and bared my breast:  It was before penetrated by the distresses of the dear Clementina, and of all your family—­Perhaps I should only have said, ’If your lordship thinks I have injured you, take your revenge.’

And now, that I am at Naples, let me say, that if you are determined, contrary to all my hopes, to accompany me to Rome, or elsewhere, on my return, with an unfriendly purpose; such, and no other, shall be my behaviour to you, if the power be given me to shew it.  I will rely on my own innocence, and hope by generosity to overcome a generous man.  Let the guilty secure themselves by violence and murder.

Superlative pride! angrily said he, and stood still, measuring me with his eye:  And could you hope for such an advantage?

While I, my lord, was calm, and determined only upon self-defence; while you were passionate, and perhaps rash, as aggressors generally are; I did not doubt it:  but could I have avoided drawing, and preserved your good opinion, I would not have drawn.  Your lordship cannot but know my principles.

Grandison, I do know them; and also the general report in your favour for skill and courage.  Do you think I would have heard with patience of the once proposed alliance, had not your character—­And then he was pleased to say many things in my favour, from the report of persons who had weight with him; some of whom he named.