"'How much?' one day asked my stupid new servant, for which I discharged her on the spot, for how could one live with an animal so little alive to the sublime and beautiful, as to have mistaken the Marquis of Headfort, wrapped up in an old great coat on a rainy day, for a common general postman! I was really very much shocked indeed. "'Come upstairs, my dear Marquis,' said I, 'and see me discharge this fool directly.' "Take off your great coat. "'Ah! _vous voila_, Marquis, _de haut en bas. Dites, donc, mon cher, en parlant du bas_, who do you make love to now? for it cannot be supposed a gay deceiver like yourself can be satisfied with old Mrs. Massey all your life, although that crim. con. affair of yours did cost you so much money.' "'Oh, my dear child,' answered poor Headfort, 'it is more than ten years since Mrs. Massey has cut me dead, as her lover.' "'Why?' I asked. "'Don't you know, my dear, that she has turned methodist, and thinks it wicked.' "'But then,' said I, 'it is still lucky for you, that her conscience permits her to make use of your house, purse, equipage and private boxes!' "'Yes,' said Headfort, 'she still does me that honour; for which I pay very dear, particularly on a Sunday, when she reads me _Letters from the Dead to the Living_, till I am almost tempted to wish her own signature at the bottom of them.' "'With whom pray do you console yourself?' "'I have not had a call, my dear, for the last five years!' "'It will come on you when you shall be born again, by the assistance of Mrs. Massey's prayers,' I remarked." I am, however, wandering from my subject. No matter, it was a very bad one! It was Fred Lamb who dined with me, read to me, talked of love to me, and looked all passion, just like the satyr of my vision. 'What vision, pray?' the reader asks; that is to say if ever I should be honoured with a reader, which is not at all certain. I am ready prepared and armed for abuse of every sort and kind: but not to be read! No matter! If this happens, it will be entirely Stockdale's fault, for not enlivening the work with pretty pictures as I have suggested to him, and certainly cannot, by the most remote possibility, be owing to any demerit of mine!