A friend of the confectioner’s interposed and got him away, and Mr. Stubbs persuaded Mr. Jorrocks to return into the cardroom, where they were speedily waited upon by the friend of the former, who announced that the Colonel must make an apology or fight, for he said, although Jorrocks was a “Colonel Anglais,” still Monsieur Eugene was of the Legion of Honour, and, consequently, very brave and not to be insulted with impunity.  All this the Yorkshireman interpreted to Mr. Jorrocks, who was most anxious to fight, and wished it was light that they might go to work immediately.  Mr. Stubbs therefore told the confectioner’s friend (who was also his foreman), that the Colonel would fight him with pistols at six o’clock in the Bois de Boulogne, but no sooner was the word “pistols” mentioned than the friend exclaimed, with a grimace and shrug of his shoulders, “Oh horror, no!  Monsieur Adolphe is brave, but he will not touch pistols—­they’re not weapons of his country.”  Jorrocks then proposed to fight him with broad swords, but this the confectioner’s foreman declined on behalf of his principal, and at last the Colonel suggested that they could not do better than fight it out with fists.  Now, the confectioner was ten years younger than Jorrocks, tall, long-armed, and not over-burthened with flesh, and had, moreover, taken lessons of Harry Harmer, when that worthy had his school in Paris, so he thought the offer was a good one, and immediately closed with it.  Jorrocks, too, had been a patron of the prize-ring, having studied under Bill Richmond, the man of colour, and was reported to have exhibited in early life (incog.) with a pugilist of some pretensions at the Fives-court, so, all things considered, fists seemed a very proper mode of settling the matter, and that being agreed upon, each party quitted the Countess de Jackson’s—­the confectioner putting forth all manner of high-flown ejaculations and prayers for success, as he groped about the ante-room for his hat, and descended the stairs.  “Oh!  God of war!” said he, throwing up his hands, “who guided the victorious army of this grand nation in Egypt, when, from the pyramids, forty centuries beheld our actions—­oh, brilliant sun, who shone upon our armies at Jaffa, at Naples, Montebello, Marengo, Austerlitz, Jena, and Algiers, who blessed our endeavours, who knowest that we are brave—­brave as a hundred lions—­look down on Charles Adolphe Eugene, and enable him to massacre and immolate on the altar of his wrath, this sacre-nom de-Dieu’d beastly hog of an Englishman”—­and thereupon he spit upon the flags with all the venom of a viper.

Jorrocks, too, indulged in a few figures of speech, as he poked his way home, though of a different description.  “Now blister my kidneys,” said he, slapping his thigh, “but I’ll sarve him out!  I’ll baste him as Randall did ugly Borrock.  I’ll knock him about as Belcher did the Big Ilkey Pigg.  I’ll damage his mug as Turner did Scroggins’s.  I’ll fib him till he’s as black as Agamemnon—­for I do feel as though I could fight a few.”