“The Papist, eh?” cried Mr. Rumbald.

“I would work for the Devil,” said I, “if he would pay me enough.”

The words appeared to Mr. Rumbald very witty, though God knows why:  I suppose it was the ale in him:  for he laughed aloud and beat on his leg.

“I’ll be bound you would,” he said.

And it was these words of mine which (under God’s Providence, as I think now) established my reputation with Mr. Rumbald as a dare-devil kind of fellow that would do anything for money.  He began, too, at that (which pleased me better at the time), to speak of precisely those matters of which I wished to hear.  It was not treasonable talk, for the ale had not driven all the sense out of him; but it was as near treasonable as might be; and it was above all against the Catholics that he raged.  I would not defile this page by writing down all that he said; but neither Her Majesty nor the Duke of York escaped his venom; there appeared nothing too bad to be said of them; and he spoke of other names, too, of the Duchess of Portsmouth whom he called by vile names (yet not viler than she had rightfully earned) and the Duchess of Cleveland; and he began upon the King, but stopped himself.

“But you are a Church of England man?” he said.  “Well, so am I now, at least I call myself so, though I should be a Presbyterian; but—­” And he stopped again.

Now all this was mighty interesting to me; for it was worse than anything I had heard before; and yet he said it all as if it was common talk among his kind, where he came from; and it was very consonant with what the King had set me to do, which was to hear what the common people had to say.  My gorge rose at the man again and again; but I was a tolerable actor in those days, and restrained myself very well.  When he went at last he clapped me on the back, as if it were I who had done all the bragging.

“You are the right kind of fellow,” he said, “and, by God, I wish there were more of us.  You will remember my name—­Mr. Rumbald the maltster—­I am to be heard of here at any time, for I come up on my business every week—­though I was not always a maltster.”

I promised I would remember him:  and indeed after a while all England has remembered him ever since.

* * * * *

It was that same evening, I think (for my diary is confused at this time, and no wonder), that when I came back to my lodgings about supper-time, I found that a man had been from Mr. Chiffinch to bid me come to Whitehall as soon as I returned; but the messenger had not seemed greatly perturbed, James told me; so I changed my clothes and had my supper and set out.