“Now darling,” said Mrs. Burton to her husband, just before one of these functions, “You are to be amiable, remember, and not lose your temper.”  Burton readily promised compliance, but that day, unfortunately, the crush on the staircase was particular disgraceful.  Apparently Burton, his wife on arm, was pushed on to the train of a lady in front of him, but whatever he was doing the crush had rendered him helpless.

“Oh dear!” cried the lady, “this horrid man is choking me.”

“It’s that blackguard of a Burton!” followed the lady’s husband.

Burton’s eyes flashed and his lips went livid, “I’ll have you out for this,” he cried, “and if you won’t fight I’ll thrash you like a dog.”

“That’s how you keep your promise,” said Mrs. Burton to him, when they got home.  “You don’t get half a dozen steps up the staircase before you have a row with someone.”  Then he burst out with his “pebble on ice” laughter.

For Burton to overhear remarks uncomplimentary to himself was no uncommon occurrence, but he rarely troubled to notice them.  Now and again, however, as the previous anecdote shows, he broke his rule.  Once at a public gathering a lady said, loudly, to a companion, “There is that infamous Captain Burton, I should like to know that he was down with some lingering and incurable illness.”

Burton turned round, and fixing his eyes upon her, said with gravity:  “Madame, I have never in all my life done anything so wicked as to express so shocking a wish as that.”

The next anecdote shows how dangerous Burton could be to those who offended him.  When the Sultan of Zanzibar was paying a visit to England, Burton and the Rev. Percy Badger were singled out to act as interpreters.  But Burton had quarrelled with Badger about something or other; so when they approached the Sultan, Burton began addressing him, not in Arabic, but in the Zanzibar patois.  The Sultan, after some conversation, turned to Badger, who, poor man, not being conversant with the patois, could only stand still in the dunce’s cap which Burton, as it were, had clapped on him and look extremely foolish; while the bystanders nodded to each other and said, “Look at that fellow.  He can’t say two words.  He’s a fraud.”  Burton revelled in Badger’s discomfiture; but a little later the two men were on good terms again; and when Badger died he was, of course, Burton’s “late lamented friend.”

Another of Burton’s aversions was “any old woman made up to look very young.”  “Good gracious,” he said, one day to a painted lady of that category.  “You haven’t changed since I saw you forty years ago.  You’re like the British flag that has braved a thousand years of the battle and the breeze.”  But the lady heaped coals of fire on his head.

“Oh, Captain Burton,” she cried, “how could you, with that musical—­ that lovely voice of yours—­make such very unpleasant remarks.”

110.  “I am an Old English Catholic.”