“’Twas _à propos_ the Chudleigh, sir, you may remember, whom you met at Ranelagh--in ’49, I think it was--undressed as Iphigenia. She came clothed in little but her virtue, and caught a bad cold a-consequence. You may have forgot the moral of your sermon, sir, but I, as a dutiful son, have stored it.” “Hang you, Bob! What moral?” “Why, sir, that a woman dreads exposure in nothing but her weakness to stand the test of it. If she’s a peculiar fineness anywhere, she’ll take some means to let you know.” “Then, sir,” cried I, with a flaming face, “I pride myself on nothing so much as my hand!”--and I brought it down stingingly on his ear. “But I don’t want your hand,” he cried, stamping about, while his father roared, “Didn’t I tell you as much?” Nevertheless, we were fast comrades, and together in some captivating peccancies, of which I only learned to rue the publicity when they led to my undoing. Mr. Roper, as I have said, found a particular delight in galling--_on somebody’s instigation_--the sides of the promoters of the new pro-Papish Bills. Well, I will ask you, what did I owe to that Church? Was it likely that my treatment at its hands had left any love between us, or that I should wish its disabilities removed, who had suffered so much from it muzzled? I had been educated, under its shadow, to a full understanding of its juggleries and impostures. Now was the time, the country being still in a ferment over its heir-apparent’s alleged marriage with the Fitzherbert, to relate my experiences. There was at that date published in London a little fashionable scapegrace of a paper called the _World_, the property of a Major Topham, who made it the vehicle for such a _chronique scandaleuse_ as the town had never yet known; and in this paper I began (by preconcert with my political ally) to disclose, over the signature “Angélique,” the true story and circumstances of a certain beautiful young lady, who had been practised upon, and in the very heart of Protestant England, by a worse than Spanish Inquisition. The series, cautiously as I began by handling it, made an immediate sensation, and was, you may be sure, deftly engineered in the House by Mr. Roper for the Opposition. Moreover, “Angélique”--which delighted me as much--gave her sweet and melancholy name to a mourning gauze, which was so pretty that I had to kill an aunt to give me a title to wear it. At the same time her instant popularity made me tremble for my incognito, which, nevertheless, I knew to be the major’s very best asset in a profitable bargain. Still, not even his tact could altogether explain away the association of ideas implied in Mr. Roper’s common friendship with me and with that poor persecuted anonymity; and that I had made myself by no means so secure as Junius was a fact disagreeably impressed upon me on a certain evening.