'Vigny’s ‘nightly excursions into the roughest of the rough quarters of Paris, Lyons, Marseilles, Naples, Genoa’ offered him ‘ample opportunities of pitting himself against men who robbed for a livelihood’, who ‘would commit a brutal assault for five francs, and a murder for twenty’. Engaging in his own epic quests, Vigny tested his art of walking-stick self-defence in ‘gambling hell[s]’ and ‘drinking den[s]’ against ‘hostile mobs’ and ‘Hooligans’ '
Jewell