There were many considerations urging me to accept the offer now made to me. The present of 1000_l._, the probable success of my Paris business, the approach of my money making season, joined to my horror of bankruptcy, all combined to induce me to alter my resolution to stop payment, and to inspire me with the hope that I would yet be able to retrieve my position and retain my good name. In a fatal hour I yielded to the temptation and closed with the proposals made to me, with the additional obligation that I was to pay off the 10,000_l._ due to the firm I have mentioned during the approaching season, and to give them good bills in exchange for the accommodation paper held by them. No sooner was this arrangement completed than I set about preparations for opening my Paris house. I refused to send any more goods to my old partner, and ordered him to wind up the business by the following May. I moreover resolved to having nothing more to do with accommodation bills, tore out all the leaves in my private letter book referring to these documents--a very fatal error, as I afterwards found--and exerted myself to pay off the claims of those of my creditors who knew my position. So well did I succeed, that by the end of April I had reduced the 10,000_l._ claim to rather less than 5000_l._, or rather to 4000_l._, taking into account the 1000_l._ conceded by the firm previously mentioned. But before this I had began to suspect that my friends did not mean to adhere to the arrangement I had entered into with them, one part of which was, that they were to retire and return me the accommodation bills, on getting good paper in their place. I had at this time placed good bills in their hands to the extent of 3500_l._, but they refused to give up those they were intended to replace until they arrived at maturity. I began to fear that they would now compel me to stop payment just when they supposed I should be in possession of fresh funds for my Paris partnership, and at a time when (with the bills in their possession, which ought, according to agreement, to have been in mine) they could rank on my estate for about 7000_l._, when with less than 4000_l._ I could have settled the account. This, by the way, is what they ultimately did, and had my estate yielded the respectable dividend they expected, instead of losing even the 1000_l._ they promised to concede to me, they would have been gainers to that amount by the operation.