There were collected and piled up all Albert's successive caprices, hunting-horns, bass-viols, flutes -- a whole orchestra, for Albert had had not a taste but a fancy for music; easels, palettes, brushes, pencils -- for music had been succeeded by painting; foils,
boxing-gloves, broadswords, and single-sticks -- for, following the example of the fashionable young men of the time, Albert de Morcerf cultivated, with far more perseverance than music and drawing, the three arts that complete a dandy's education, i.e., fencing, boxing, and single-stick; and it was here that he received Grisier, Cook, and Charles Leboucher.
A dark-blue oar crossed with a cherry-pink one above his mantel-piece spoke of the old Oxonian and Leander man, while the foils and
boxing-gloves above and below them were the tools of a man who had won supremacy with each.