CHAPTER XV

A PATRIOT ABROAD

Nine days after his master’s departure, Daniel Skepsey, a man of some renown of late, as a subject of reports and comments in the newspapers, obtained a passport, for the identification, if need were, of his missing or misapprehended person in a foreign country, of the language of which three unpronounceable words were knocking about his head to render the thought of the passport a staff of safety; and on the morning that followed he was at speed through Normandy, to meet his master rounding homeward from Paris, at a town not to be spoken as it is written, by reason of the custom of the good people of the country, with whom we would fain live on neighbourly terms:—­yes, and they had proof of it, not so very many years back, when they were enduring the worst which can befall us—­though Mr. Durance, to whom he was indebted for the writing of the place of his destination large on a card, and the wording of the French sound beside it, besides the jotting down of trains and the station for the change of railways, Mr. Durance could say, that the active form of our sympathy consisted in the pouring of cheeses upon them when they were prostrate and unable to resist!

A kind gentleman, Mr. Durance, as Daniel Skepsey had recent cause to know, but often exceedingly dark; not so patriotic as desireable, it was to be feared; and yet, strangely indeed, Mr. Durance had said cogent things on the art of boxing and on manly exercises, and he hoped—­he was emphatic in saying he hoped—­we should be regenerated.  He must have meant, that boxing—­on a grand scale would contribute to it.  He said, that a blow now and then was wholesome for us all.  He recommended a monthly private whipping for old gentlemen who decline the use of the gloves, to disperse their humours; not excluding Judges and Magistrates:  he could hardly be in earnest.  He spoke in a clergyman’s voice, and said it would be payment of good assurance money, beneficial to their souls:  he seemed to mean it.  He said, that old gentlemen were bottled vapours, and it was good for them to uncork them periodically.  He said, they should be excused half the strokes if they danced nightly—­they resented motion.  He seemed sadly wanting in veneration.

But he might not positively intend what he said.  Skepsey could overlook everything he said, except the girding at England.  For where is a braver people, notwithstanding appearances!  Skepsey knew of dozens of gallant bruisers, ready for the cry to strip to the belt; worthy, with a little public encouragement, to rank beside their grandfathers of the Ring, in the brilliant times when royalty and nobility countenanced the manly art, our nursery of heroes, and there was not the existing unhappy division of classes.  He still trusted to convince Mr. Durance, by means of argument and happy instances, historical and immediate, that the English may justly consider themselves the elect of nations, for reasons better than their accumulation of the piles of gold-better than ‘usurers’ reasons,’ as Mr. Durance called them.  Much that Mr. Durance had said at intervals was, although remembered almost to the letter of the phrase, beyond his comprehension, and he put it aside, with penitent blinking at his deficiency.