Young Mr. Beauchamp at that period of the panic had not the slightest feeling for the taxpayer.  He was therefore unable to penetrate the mystery of our roundabout way of enlivening him.  He pored over the journals in perplexity, and talked of his indignation nightly to his pretty partners at balls, who knew not they were lesser Andromedas of his dear Andromeda country, but danced and chatted and were gay, and said they were sure he would defend them.  The men he addressed were civil.  They listened to him, sometimes with smiles and sometimes with laughter, but approvingly, liking the lad’s quick spirit.  They were accustomed to the machinery employed to give our land a shudder and to soothe it, and generally remarked that it meant nothing.  His uncle Everard, and his uncle’s friend Stukely Culbrett, expounded the nature of Frenchmen to him, saying that they were uneasy when not periodically thrashed; it would be cruel to deny them their crow beforehand; and so the pair of gentlemen pooh-poohed the affair; agreeing with him, however, that we had no great reason to be proud of our appearance, and the grounds they assigned for this were the activity and the prevalence of the ignoble doctrines of Manchester—­a power whose very existence was unknown to Mr. Beauchamp.  He would by no means allow the burden of our national disgrace to be cast on one part of the nation.  We were insulted, and all in a poultry-flutter, yet no one seemed to feel it but himself!  Outside the Press and Parliament, which must necessarily be the face we show to the foreigner, absolute indifference reigned.  Navy men and red-coats were willing to join him or anybody in sneers at a clipping and paring miserly Government, but they were insensible to the insult, the panic, the startled-poultry show, the shame of our exhibition of ourselves in Europe.  It looked as if the blustering French Guard were to have it all their own way.  And what would they, what could they but, think of us!  He sat down to write them a challenge.

He is not the only Englishman who has been impelled by a youthful chivalry to do that.  He is perhaps the youngest who ever did it, and consequently there were various difficulties to be overcome.  As regards his qualifications for addressing Frenchmen, a year of his prae-neptunal time had been spent in their capital city for the purpose of acquiring French of Paris, its latest refinements of pronunciation and polish, and the art of conversing.  He had read the French tragic poets and Moliere; he could even relish the Gallic-classic—­’Qu’il mourut!’ and he spoke French passably, being quite beyond the Bullish treatment of the tongue.  Writing a letter in French was a different undertaking.  The one he projected bore no resemblance to an ordinary letter.  The briefer the better, of course; but a tone of dignity was imperative, and the tone must be individual, distinctive, Nevil Beauchamp’s, though not in his native language.  First he tried his letter in French, and lost sight of himself completely.