Memoires de Monsieur Le Marquis D'Argens: Avec Quelques Lettres Sur Divers Sujets (1735)

I burst out in a scornful laugh. THAT! I say; he is a captain of dragoons, and his father an attorney in Bedford Row. The whiskers of a roturier, my good Lankin, grow as long as the beard of a Plantagenet. It don’t require much noble blood to learn the polka. If you were younger, Lankin, we might go for a shilling a night, and dance every evening at M. Laurent’s Casino, and skip about in a little time as well as that fellow. Only we despise the kind of thing you know, –only we’re too grave, and too steady.