“Your nurse’s family were silk-weavers out of France, whither they returned to Arras in French Flanders, shortly before your mother took her vows, carrying you with them, then a child of three years old.  ’Twas a town, before the late vigorous measures of the French king, full of Protestants, and here your nurse’s father, old Pastoureau, he with whom you afterwards lived at Ealing, adopted the reformed doctrines, perverting all his house with him.  They were expelled thence by the edict of his most Christian Majesty, and came to London, and set up their looms in Spittlefields.  The old man brought a little money with him, and carried on his trade, but in a poor way.  He was a widower; by this time his daughter, a widow too, kept house for him, and his son and he labored together at their vocation.  Meanwhile your father had publicly owned his conversion just before King Charles’s death (in whom our Church had much such another convert), was reconciled to my Lord Viscount Castlewood, and married, as you know, to his daughter.

“It chanced that the younger Pastoureau, going with a piece of brocade to the mercer who employed him, on Ludgate Hill, met his old rival coming out of an ordinary there.  Pastoureau knew your father at once, seized him by the collar, and upbraided him as a villain, who had seduced his mistress, and afterwards deserted her and her son.  Mr. Thomas Esmond also recognized Pastoureau at once, besought him to calm his indignation, and not to bring a crowd round about them; and bade him to enter into the tavern, out of which he had just stepped, when he would give him any explanation.  Pastoureau entered, and heard the landlord order the drawer to show Captain Thomas to a room; it was by his Christian name that your father was familiarly called at his tavern haunts, which, to say the truth, were none of the most reputable.

“I must tell you that Captain Thomas, or my Lord Viscount afterwards, was never at a loss for a story, and could cajole a woman or a dun with a volubility, and an air of simplicity at the same time, of which many a creditor of his has been the dupe.  His tales used to gather verisimilitude as he went on with them.  He strung together fact after fact with a wonderful rapidity and coherence.  It required, saving your presence, a very long habit of acquaintance with your father to know when his lordship was l——­,—­telling the truth or no.

“He told me with rueful remorse when he was ill—­for the fear of death set him instantly repenting, and with shrieks of laughter when he was well, his lordship having a very great sense of humor—­how in a half an hour’s time, and before a bottle was drunk, he had completely succeeded in biting poor Pastoureau.  The seduction he owned to:  that he could not help:  he was quite ready with tears at a moment’s warning, and shed them profusely to melt his credulous listener.  He wept for your mother even more than Pastoureau did, who cried very heartily, poor fellow, as my lord informed me; he