“It was my father’s,” he told her. “Peter was captain and I was supercargo. We’d been to South America and the Spanish ports, and when we reached England we had a letter from my father saying that fighting had broken out; that we should sell the ship as well as the cargo, so his investment might be safe from seizure. Now we must stay until the war’s over, and that won’t be long.”

“What makes you think so?” I asked, remembering my father’s letter.

Nathaniel smiled. “What’s the use of going over that again? Our country’s got no money to fight England with, and no generals, and not many men.”

“You don’t know what we’ve got,” I told him. “One thing we haven’t got is a lot of rake-hells and nincompoops to direct our affairs.”

Nathaniel turned to Mademoiselle de Sabrevois. “You see how it is. Peter thinks all English aristocrats must be rake-hells or nincompoops.”

“Don’t misquote me,” I said. “I don’t think they must be; but I think most of them are. I can prove it by Dr. Price’s book.”

Nathaniel laughed. “Your book! You can prove almost anything out of your book!”

“Yes,” I said, “I can. Almost anything. No matter what bad thing I say about England, it can be proved out of Roderick Random or Dr. Price.”

I drew Dr. Price’s thin book from my side pocket, where I always carried it in case an Englishman took it into his head to force offensive misstatements on me. Since Price himself was English, I could quote from him without being condemned myself.

“Listen,” I told Nathaniel. “Price says this: ‘An abandoned venality, the inseparable companion of dissipation and extravagance, has poisoned the springs of public virtue among us.’ That’s the opinion of one wise Englishman: that his country has been brought to the brink of ruin by dissipation and extravagance.”

“The trouble with Price, probably,” Nathaniel said carelessly, “was that his dinner wasn’t resting well when he wrote his book.”

I looked at Marie de Sabrevois. Her face was blank, as if she were unaware of our argument, but I knew she had missed none of it. I could see she had heard worse things than I could ever say to Nathaniel, so I spoke to him sharply. “Before you discredit a man like Price, just bear in mind that every great man in England has a mistress or two. They brag of it. The country’s sprinkled with illegitimate noblemen and generals, and they even brag of that. What’s more, if there’s a decent woman in polite society, you’d never suspect it after listening to the conversation of any of your London rakes.”