ench lady, bearing the name of Madame d'Auffray, was
handed to her.

Beauchamp had gone off to his friend Lydiard, to fortify himself in his
resolve to reply to that newspaper article by eliciting counsel to the
contrary. Phrase by phrase he fought through the first half of his
composition of the reply against Lydiard, yielding to him on a point or
two of literary judgement, only the more vehemently to maintain his ideas
of discretion, which were, that he would not take shelter behind a single
subterfuge; that he would try this question nakedly, though he should
stand alone; that he would stake his position on it, and establish his
right to speak his opinions: and as for unseasonable times, he protested
it was the cry of a gorged middle-class, frightened of further action,
and making snug with compromise. Would it be a seasonable time when there
was uproar? Then it would be a time to be silent on such themes: they
could be discussed calmly now, and without danger; and whether he was
hunted or not, he cared nothing. He declined to consider the peculiar
nature of Englishmen: they must hear truth or perish.

Knowing the difficulty once afflicting Beauchamp in the art of speaking
on politics tersely, Lydiard was rather astonished at his well-delivered
cannonade; and he fancied that his modesty had been displaced by the new
acquirement; not knowing the nervous fever of his friend's condition, for
which the rattle of speech was balm, and contention a native element, and
the assumption of truth a necessity. Beauchamp hugged his politics like
some who show their love of the pleasures of life by taking to them
angrily. It was all he had: he had given up all for it. He forced Lydiard
to lay down his pen and walk back to the square with him, and went on
arguing, interjecting, sneering, thumping the old country, raising and
oversetting her, treating her alternately like a disrespected
grandmother, and like a woman anciently beloved; as a dead lump, and as a
garden of seeds; reviewing prominent political men, laughing at the
dwarf-giants; finally casting anchor on a Mechanics' Institute that he
had recently heard of, where working men met weekly for the purpose of
reading the British poets.

'That's the best thing I've heard of late,' he said, shaking Lydiard's
hand on the door-steps.

'Ah! You're Commander Beauchamp; I think I know you. I've seen you on a
platform,' cried a fresh-faced man in decent clothes, halting on his way