die so soon.”  But this inroad upon that regularity of living which he had for some time observed, agreed so ill with him that he never recovered this meal, but died in less than a fortnight.  This gave occasion for some humorous people to say, that old Louis, after all, was killed by a Briton.  But if this story be true, (which I think there can be no room to doubt, as the colonel, from whom I have often heard it, though absent, could scarce be misinformed,) it might more properly be said that he fell by his own vanity; in which view I thought it so remarkable, as not to be unworthy of a place in these memoirs.

The captain quickly returned, and continued, with small interruptions, at Paris, at least till 1720, and how much longer I do not certainly know.  The Earl’s favour and generosity made him easy in his affairs, though he was, (as has been observed before,) part of the time, out of commission, by breaking the regiment to which he belonged, of which before he was major.  This was in all probability the gayest part of his life, and the most criminal.  Whatever wise and good examples he might find in the family where he had the honour to reside, it is certain that the French court, during the regency of the Duke of Orleans, was one of the most dissolute under heaven.  What, by a wretched abuse of language, have been called intrigues of love and gallantry, were so entirely to the major’s then degenerate taste, that if not the whole business, at least the whole happiness of his life, consisted in them; and he had now too much leisure for one who was so prone to abuse it.  His fine constitution, than which perhaps there was hardly ever a better, gave him great opportunities of indulging himself in these excesses; and his good spirits enabled him to pursue his pleasures of every kind in so alert and sprightly a manner, that multitudes envied him, and called him, by a dreadful kind of compliment, “the happy rake.”

CHAPTER IV.

Checks of conscience.

Yet still the checks of conscience, and some remaining principles of so good an education, would break in upon his most licentious hours; and I particularly remember he told me, that when some of his dissolute companions were once congratulating him on his distinguished felicity, a dog happening at that time to come into the room, he could not forbear groaning inwardly, and saying to himself, ‘Oh that I were that dog!’ Such then was his happiness; and such perhaps is that of hundreds more who bear themselves highest in the contempt of religion, and glory in that infamous servitude which they affect to call liberty.  But these remonstrances of reason and conscience were in vain; and, in short, he carried things so far in this wretched part of his life, that I am well assured some sober English gentlemen, who made no great pretences to religion, how agreeable soever he might have been to them on other accounts, rather declined than sought his company, as fearing they might have been ensnared and corrupted by it.