lustre, scattered the wax-lights on all sides,
accompanying the exploit by a yell that would have called up all
Connemara at midnight, if it had only been heard there; in an instant,
the gens d'armes, always sufficiently near to be called in if required,
came pouring into the room, and supposing the whole affair had been a
preconcerted thing to obtain possession of the money in the bank,
commenced capturing different members of the company who appeared, by
enjoying the confusion, to be favouring and assisting it. My cousin Guy
was one of the first so treated--a proceeding to which he responded by an
appeal rather in favour with most Englishmen, and at once knocked down
the gen d'arme; this was the signal for a general engagement, and
accordingly, before an explanation could possibly be attempted, a most
terrific combat ensued. The Frenchmen in the room siding with the gen
d'armerie, and making common cause against the English; who, although
greatly inferior in number, possessed considerable advantage, from long
habit in street-rows and boxing encounters. As for myself, I had the
good fortune to be pitted against a very pursy and unwieldy Frenchman,
who sacre'd to admiration, but never put in a single blow at me; while,
therefore, I amused myself practising what old Cribb called "the one,
two," upon his fat carcase, I had abundant time and opportunity to watch
all that was doing about me, and truly a more ludicrous affair I never
beheld. Imagine about fifteen or sixteen young Englishmen, most of them
powerful, athletic fellows, driving an indiscriminate mob of about five
times their number before them, who, with courage enough to resist, were
yet so totally ignorant of the boxing art, that they retreated,
pell-mell, before the battering phalanx of their sturdy opponents--the
most ludicrous figure of all being Mr. O'Leary himself, who, standing
upon the table, laid about him with a brass lustre that he had unstrung,
and did considerable mischief with this novel instrument of warfare,
crying out the entire time, "murder every mother's son of them," "give
them another taste of Waterloo." Just as he had uttered the last
patriotic sentiment, he received a slight admonition from behind, by the
point of a gen d'arme's sword, which made him leap from the table with
the alacrity of a harlequin, and come plump down among the thickest of
the fray. My attention was now directed elsewhere, for above all the
din and "tapage" of th