The chimney-sweeper and his comrades were soon in arms,
and Popanilla would certainly have been killed or ducked by this
superior man and his friends, had it not been for the mild remonstrance
of his conductor and the singular appearance of his costume.
'What could have induced you to be so imprudent?' said his rescuer, when
they had escaped from the crowd.
'Truly,' said Popanilla, 'I thought that in a country where you may
bastinado the wretch who presumes to ask you for alms, there could
surely be no objection to my knocking down the scoundrel who dared to
stand in my way.'
'By no means!' said his friend, slightly elevating his eye-brows. 'Here
all men are equal. You are probably not aware that you are at present
in the freest country in the world.'
'I do not exactly understand you; what is this freedom?'
'My good friend, I really am the last person in the world to answer
questions. Freedom is, in one word, Liberty: a kind of thing which you
foreigners never can understand, and which mere theory can make no man
understand.
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