at seven o’clock.”  So we went to supper, and Sir John, becoming very friendly, must know my name; which, when I had told him, and of what place and family, he rose from his seat, and embracing me, told me he knew my father very well, and had been intimately acquainted with him, and told me several passages wherein my father had particularly obliged him.  After this we went to supper, and the king’s health being drank round, the colonel moved the sooner because he had a mind to talk with me.

When we were going to the king he inquired of me where I had been, and what occasion brought me to the army.  I told him the short history of my travels, and that I came hither from Vienna on purpose to see the King of Sweden and his army.  He asked me if there was any service he could do me, by which he meant, whether I desired an employment.  I pretended not to take him so, but told him the protection his acquaintance would afford me was more than I could have asked, since I might thereby have opportunity to satisfy my curiosity, which was the chief end of my coming abroad.  He perceiving by this that I had no mind to be a soldier, told me very kindly I should command him in anything; that his tent and equipage, horses and servants should always have orders to be at my service; but that as a piece of friendship, he would advise me to retire to some place distant from the army, for that the army would march to-morrow, and the king was resolved to fight General Tilly, and he would not have me hazard myself; that if I thought fit to take his advice, he would have me take that interval to see the court at Berlin, whither he would send one of his servants to wait on me.

His discourse was too kind not to extort the tenderest acknowledgment from me that I was capable of.  I told him his care of me was so obliging, that I knew not what return to make him, but if he pleased to leave me to my choice I desired no greater favour than to trail a pike under his command in the ensuing battle.  “I can never answer it to your father,” says he, “to suffer you to expose yourself so far.”  I told him my father would certainly acknowledge his friendship in the proposal made me; but I believed he knew him better than to think he would be well pleased with me if I should accept of it; that I was sure my father would have rode post five hundred miles to have been at such a battle under such a general, and it should never be told him that his son had rode fifty miles to be out of it.  He seemed to be something concerned at the resolution I had taken, and replied very quickly upon me, that he approved very well of my courage; “but,” says he, “no man gets any credit by running upon needless adventures, nor loses any by shunning hazards which he has no order for.  ’Tis enough,” says he, “for a gentleman to behave well when he is commanded upon any service; I have had fighting enough,” says he, “upon these points of honour, and I never got anything but reproof for it from the king himself.”