There was something so perfectly good-humored in my new friend, that I could not be at all cross, even though I might not quite enter into his notions. I was obliged to inform him, however, that I had never given lectures, written books, pamphlets, or sermons. That I was not an Englishman. That I was not well acquainted with American history, and had no idea whether his friends and himself deserved to be hanged or not—though I confessed I rather thought not. He was very pertinacious, however, and suggested a dozen different courses of acting for me, being in truth at that moment in desperate need himself of a stranger to supply the place of a literary man who had absconded, and knowing the dire need in which the city of Boston stood of some “new thing,” to fill the yawning void left by the giantess and the horse with three tails. I began to fancy, as he went on, that amongst all the pearls he was throwing before me, I might find one which suited my own purpose, and at length it was determined that I should write a little book for him, which he would immediately bring out in what he guessed was the very best possible style. Our arrangements were soon made, though, as I found afterward, he agreed to pay me about one-third of the sum which I ought to have received. That book, however, not only served to put a small sum into my pocket, but also to spread my fame, and to occupy my thoughts. I was very glad of the latter; for the moment I sat down by myself in my inn, I fell into sad reveries, and I wished very much to let time do his work of consoling by those slow and almost insensible steps through which he best effects his objects. The subject, the treatment, was all discussed in less than half an hour; for my friend, the bookseller, had very definite ideas, and knew to a nicety what would sell, and what would not. While we were still talking over these things, several gentlemen entered the shop, to whom the bookseller—now in possession of my name—introduced me as the celebrated Monsieur De Lacy. Thus I obtained occupation for the next six weeks, and acquaintance with some of the pleasantest persons I ever met with in my life; and the next morning I saw announcement in the public prints that Monsieur De Lacy, the well known Vendeean chief had arrived in Boston, followed by an apocripha twice as long as the book of Tobit, regarding the bloody battles I had fought, and the victories I had obtained in a district within which I had never set my foot. All this was based upon a deep scar on my cheek, which I had received from the heel of an Austrian soldier, as I lay upon the ground in the streets of Zurich.