His excellency asked, if Jolter could guess at the cause of his imprisonment, that he might be the better prepared to vindicate or excuse his conduct: but neither he nor Pipes could give the smallest hint of intelligence on that subject; though he furnished himself from Tom's own mouth with a circumstantial account of the manner in which his master had been arrested, as well as of his own behaviour, and the disaster he had received on that occasion. His lordship never doubted that Pickle had brought this calamity upon himself by some unlucky prank he had played at the masquerade; when he understood that the young gentleman had drunk freely in the afternoon, and been so whimsical as to go thither with a man in woman's apparel; and he that same day waited on the French minister, in full confidence of obtaining his discharge; but met with more difficulty than he expected, the court of France being extremely punctilious in everything that concerns a prince of the blood: the ambassador was therefore obliged to talk in very high terms; and, though the present circumstances of the French politics would not allow them to fall out with the British administration for trifles, all the favour he could procure was to promise that Pickle should be set at liberty, provided he would ask pardon of the prince to whom he had given offence. His excellency thought this was but a reasonable condescension, supposing Peregrine to have been in the wrong; and Jolter was admitted to him in order to communicate and reinforce his lordship's advice, which was, that he comply with the terms proposed. The governor, who did not enter this gloomy fortress without fear and trembling, found his pupil in a dismal apartment, void of all furniture but a stool and a truckle-bed. The moment he was admitted, he perceived the youth whistling with great unconcern, and working with his pencil at the bare wall, on which he had delineated a ludicrous figure labelled with the name of the nobleman, whom he had affronted, and an English mastiff with his leg lifted up, in the attitude of making water in his shoe. He had been even so presumptuous as to explain the device with satirical inscriptions in the French language, which, when Jolter perused, his hair stood on end with affright. The very turnkey was confounded and overawed by the boldness of his behaviour, which he had never seen matched by any inhabitant of that place; and actually joined his friend in persuading him to submit to the easy demand of the minister. But our hero, far from embracing the counsel of this advocate, handed him to the door with great ceremony, and dismissed him with a kick on the breeches; and, to all the supplications, and even tears of Jolter, made no other reply than that he would stoop to no condescension, because he had committed no crime, but would leave his case to the cognisance and exertion of the British court, whose duty it was to see justice done to