That I might avoid being questioned and quoted in the most curious and the most babbling town in the world, I related what had passed to three or four of my friends, and hardly stirred abroad during a fortnight out of a little lodging which very few people knew of. At the end of this term the Marshal of Berwick came to see me, and asked me what I meant to confine myself to my chamber when my name was trumpeted about in all the companies of Paris, and the most infamous stories were spread concerning me. This was the first notice I had, and it was soon followed by others. I appeared immediately in the world, and found there was hardly a scurrilous tongue which had not been let loose on my subject; and that those persons whom the Duke of Ormond and Earl of Mar must influence, or might silence, were the loudest in defaming me. Particular instances wherein I had failed were cited; and as it was the fashion for every Jacobite to affect being in the secret, you might have found a multitude of vouchers to facts which, if they had been true, could in the nature of them be known to very few persons. This method of beating down the reputation of a man by noise and impudence imposed on the world at first, convinced people who were not acquainted with me, and staggered even my friends. But it ceased in a few days to have any effect against me. The malice was too gross to pass upon reflection. These stories died away almost as fast as they were published, for this very reason, because they were particular. They gave out, for instance, that I had taken to my own use a very great sum of the Chevalier’s money, when it was notorious that I had spent a great sum of my own in his service, and never would be obliged to him for a farthing, in which case, I believe, I was single. Upon this head it was easy to appeal to a very honest gentleman, the Queen’s Treasurer at St. Germains, through whose hands, and not through mine, went the very little money which the Chevalier had. They gave out that whilst he was in Scotland he never heard from me, though it was notorious that I sent him no less than five expresses during the six weeks which he consumed in this expedition. It was easy, on this head, to appeal to the persons to whom my despatches had been committed.