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The ferment, into which the cooper's poltroonery had thrown the sailors, now brooked no restraint; and one of them a young American who went by the name of Salem dashed out from among the rest, and fetching the cooper a blow that sent him humming over toward the consul, flourished a naked sheath-knife in the air, and burst forth with "I'm the little fellow that can answer your questions; just put them to me once, counsellor."
The singular confession of a man who regretted his impertinence because he discovered his adversary was a better swordsman, would, under any other code or in any other country, have argued poltroonery. Not so here; no one for a moment suspected his comrade's courage, nor could any circumstance arise to make it doubtful save an actual instance of cowardice.
If that fails, he will not perish the more, or by a death more cruel, for having made it; and he will die as a brave man should, with his face to the danger, and with his arm about the woman that he sought in vain to save. But, if he makes no effort, shrinking without a struggle from his duty, he himself will not the less certainly perish for this baseness of poltroonery.
'Tis not the luck of every soldier to have had his hand wrung by the Great Duke of Cumberland, or to have been presented with ten guineas to drink his health withal by Field-Marshal Wade. We would have thought it vile poltroonery and macaronism to have worn wigs to say nothing of powder unless, indeed, the peruke was a true Malplaquet club or Dettingen scratch.
We at first fancied that this apparently surreptitious proceeding was perhaps traceable to the awe entertained by the bachelor brothers for their unruly tenants; but we were relieved from the sense of acting in a style bordering on poltroonery, by finding that the principal staircase had been boarded up to preserve its marble steps and sides from injury.
The rashness of Abercromby before the fight was matched by his poltroonery after it. Such was his terror that on the evening of his defeat he sent an order to Colonel Cummings, commanding at Fort William Henry, to send all the sick and wounded and all the heavy artillery to New York without delay. He himself followed so closely upon this disgraceful missive that Cummings had no time to obey it.
Or, in other words, since they must be selfish, let them be so without the poltroonery of selfishness. Edward's wish was to be perfectly just, as far as he could be now just to himself as well; for how was he to prove of worth and aid to any one depending on him, if he stood crippled? Just, also, to his family; to his possible posterity; and just to Dahlia.
Let me cease to exist rather, let me cease to die. Will not plenty of my kind remain to satisfy thy soul with torment!" Up towered a surge of shame at his poltroonery; he prayed for his own solitary release, and abandoned his fellows to the maker of their misery! "No!" he cried aloud, "I will not! I will not pray for that! I will not fare better than my fellows!
Fifty years ago Macaulay wrote of Bertrand Barere: "When we put everything together, poltroonery, baseness, effrontery, mendacity, barbarity, the result is something which in a novel we should condemn as caricature, and to which, we venture to say, no parallel can be found in history." It is indeed a pity the great essayist did not live to contemplate this pair of Texas attorneys.
The club then asked that Galletti should be named general of the carbineers; and he was appointed. "Such was the poltroonery or such the depravity of consciences that no journal would or dared denounce the murder. But why do I speak of denouncing? The murder was honored with illuminations and festivities in numerous cities, and not in these States only, but beyond them, especially at Leghorn."
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