I would do as he did."
"I'll be bound for it you would; probably you have some of the same sort of stubborn stuff in you.
"I should be sorry if I had not; he and Tell were brothers, and I'd scorn the Swiss, man or woman, who had none of the much-enduring nature of our heroic William in his soul."
"If Tell was like Wellington, he was an ass."
"Does not ASS mean BAUDET?" asked Frances, turning to me.
"No, no," replied I, "it means an ESPRIT-FORT; and now," I continued, as I saw that fresh occasion of strife was brewing between these two, "it is high time to go."
Hunsden rose. "Good bye," said he to Frances; "I shall be off for this glorious England to-morrow, and it may be twelve months or more before I come to Brussels again; whenever I do come I'll seek you out, and you shall see if I don't find means to make you fiercer than a dragon.
You've done pretty well this evening, but next interview you shall challenge me outright. Meantime you're doomed to become Mrs. William Crimsworth, I suppose; poor young lady? but you have a spark of spirit; cherish it, and give the Professor the full benefit thereof."
"Are you married. Mr. Hunsden?" asked Frances, suddenly.
"No. I should have thought you might have guessed I was a Benedict by my look."
"Well, whenever you marry don't take a wife out of Switzerland; for if you begin blaspheming Helvetia, and cursing the cantons--above all, if you mention the word ASS in the same breath with the name Tell (for ass IS baudet, I know; though Monsieur is pleased to translate it ESPRIT-FORT) your mountain maid will some night smother her Breton-bretonnant, even as your own Shakspeare's Othello smothered Desdemona."
"I am warned," said Hunsden; "and so are you, lad," (nodding to me). "I hope yet to hear of a travesty of the Moor and his gentle lady, in which the parts shall be reversed according to the plan just sketched--you, however, being in my nightcap. Farewell, mademoiselle!" He bowed on her hand, absolutely like Sir Charles Grandison on that of Harriet Byron; adding--"Death from such fingers would not be without charms."
"Mon Dieu!" murmured Frances, opening her large eyes and lifting her distinctly arched brows; "c'est qu'il fait des compliments! je ne m'y suis pas attendu." She smiled, half in ire, half in mirth, curtsied with foreign grace, and so they parted.