“I know that I have been pictured to you as one who has forgotten his dignity, and who is the slave of a love for wine.  Alas! that beverage that was forced upon me in my tenderest youth, by the ferocious Simon, has served to fortify my constitution in the course of a most painful life, even as it did that of the great Henry IV.; and, if I have been addicted to the use of it in this place, it was for my health’s sake, to preserve which a more refined method would not have so well suited me.

“The use of tobacco was recommended to me in 1797, at Baltimore, also on account of my health.  I have profited by it.  It has occasionally served to dissipate my sense of weariness, and the thin vapour has often caused me to forget that life might be breathed away from my lips almost as readily.

“I have wished, my dear sister, to speak to you as a brother.  Whatever may be the force of a custom preserved during nineteen years, I shall know how, in sharing the fatigues of my troops, to deprive myself of what is a pastime to them.  Other occupations will but too easily absorb me entirely.  Cease to see by any other vision than your own.  Trust to the evidence of your own senses, and no other.  I have learned, through a long series of misfortunes, how to be a man, and to be upon my guard against my fellowmen.  Truth is not apt to penetrate under golden fringes.  It is, however, my divinity; and henceforward, my sister, it will dwell with us.  I grant the right of having it told to me.  It will never offend a monarch who, having contracted the habit of bearing it, will have the courage to heed it for the benefit of his people.

“I dispersed the last calumny which perversity has aimed at me, when it declared that your brother was still in the United States.  No; I had long left it when my evil destiny conducted me from Brazil (as you will see in my “Memoirs”) to France, which is anything for me but the promised land.  Heaven, to whom my eyes and hopes were ever raised, will not fail to have in its keeping certain witnesses to my existence.  There is one to whom I presented, in 1801, at Philadelphia, three gold doubloons, a note of twenty dollars, three shirts, a coat, a levite, and two pairs of old boots.  This witness, whom chance has again brought me acquainted with here, is a certain Chaufford, son of a baker of Rouen, well known to the keeper of the prison, and who was on board the French fleet which sailed from Brest.  This witness (of whom I have spoken in my “Memoirs”) deserted from the fleet.  My servant Francois meeting him in Marc Street, brought him to me.  I was then suffering in consequence of a fall from my horse, and was obliged to go about on crutches; and it was from me that he received every species of assistance, and it is by me that he has been reminded of it within the walls of this odious prison, where he least of all expected again to meet with his illustrious benefactor.