And now I come to an affair of which there have been many accounts written, some of them within a mile or two of the truth, the most but sheer romantics. I have in my mind notably the account of the officer Buhot printed two years after the events in question, in which he makes the most fabulous statement as to the valiancy of Father Hamilton's stand in the private house in the Rue des Reservoirs, and maintains that myself--_le fier Eccossais_, as he is flattering enough to designate me--drew my sword upon himself and threatened to run him through for his proposition that I should confess to a complicity in the attempt upon his Royal Highness. I have seen his statement reproduced with some extra ornament in the _Edinburgh Courant_, and the result of all this is that till this day my neighbours give me credit, of which I am loth to advantage myself, for having felled two or three of the French officers before I was overcome at the hinder-end. The matter is, in truth, more prosaic as it happened, and if these memorials of mine leave the shadow of a doubt in the minds of any interested in an old story that created some stir in its time, I pray them see the archives of M. Bertin, the late Lieut.-General of the police. Bertin was no particular friend of mine, that had been the unconscious cause of great trouble and annoyance to him, but he has the truth in the deposition I made and signed prior to my appointment to a company of the d'Auvergne regiment. Well, to take matters in their right order, it was the evening of the day I had given the letter to the Prince that Father Hamilton expressed his intention of passing that night in the house of a friend. I looked at him with manifest surprise, for he had been at the bottle most of the afternoon, and was by now more in a state for his bed than for going among friends. “Well,” he cried peevishly, observing my dubiety. “Do you think me too drunk for the society of a parcel of priests? _Ma foi!_ it is a pretty thing that I cannot budge from my ordinary habitude of things without a stuck owl setting up a silent protest.” To a speech so wanting in dignity I felt it better there should be no reply, and instead I helped him into his great-coat. As I did so, he made an awkward lurching movement due to his corpulence, and what jumped out of an inner pocket but a pistol? Which of us was the more confused at that it would be hard to say. For my part, the weapon--that I had never seen in his possession before--was a fillip to my sleeping conscience; I picked it up with a distaste, and he took it from me with trembling fingers and an averted look. “A dangerous place, Versailles, after dark,” he explained feebly. “One never knows, one never knows,” and into his pocket hurriedly with it. “I shall be back for breakfast,” he went on. “Unless--unless--oh, I certainly shall be back.” And off he set.