Dunham Massy!--As to Lord Vaughan, he is young enough to talk

impertinently, and too old to answer for it. I shall demand satisfaction

for his words of his nephew Richard Vaughan, Member of Parliament for

the Borough of Merioneth.--As for you, John Campbell, Earl of Greenwich,

I will kill you as Achon killed Matas; but with a fair cut, and not from

behind, it being my custom to present my heart and not my back to the

point of the sword.--I have spoken my mind, my lords. And so use

witchcraft if you like. Consult the fortune-tellers. Grease your skins

with ointments and drugs to make them invulnerable; hang round your

necks charms of the devil or the Virgin. I will fight you blest or

curst, and I will not have you searched to see if you are wearing any

wizard's tokens. On foot or on horseback, on the highroad if you wish

it, in Piccadilly, or at Charing Cross; and they shall take up the

pavement for our meeting, as they unpaved the court of the Louvre for

the duel between Guise and Bassompierre. All of you! Do you hear? I mean

to fight you all.--Dorme, Earl of Caernarvon, I will make you swallow my

sword up to the hilt, as Marolles did to Lisle Mariveaux, and then we

shall see, my lord, whether you will laugh or not.--You, Burlington, who

look like a girl of seventeen--you shall choose between the lawn of your

house in Middlesex, and your beautiful garden at Londesborough in

Yorkshire, to be buried in.--I beg to inform your lordships that it does

not suit me to allow your insolence in my presence. I will chastise you,

my lords. I take it ill that you should have ridiculed Lord Fermain

Clancharlie. He is worth more than you. As Clancharlie, he has nobility,

which you have; as Gwynplaine, he has intellect, which you have not. I

make his cause my cause, insult to him insult to me, and your ridicule

my wrath. We shall see who will come out of this affair alive, because I

871

The Man Who Laughs