Full of this affair, the importance of which I exaggerated in proportion to my inexperience, I told Silvia that I wanted to accompany some English friends as far as Calais, and that she would oblige me by getting me a passport from the Duc de Gesvres.  Always ready to oblige me, she sat down directly and wrote the duke a letter, telling me to deliver it myself since my personal description was necessary.  These passports carry legal weight in the Isle de France only, but they procure one respect in all the northern parts of the kingdom.

Fortified with Silvia’s letter, and accompanied by her husband, I went to the duke who was at his estate at St. Toro, and he had scarcely read the letter through before he gave me the passport.  Satisfied on this point I went to Villette, and asked Madame if she had anything I could take to her niece.  “You can take her the box of china statuettes,” said she, “if M. Corneman has not sent them already.”  I called on the banker who gave me the box, and in return for a hundred Louis a letter of credit on a Dunkirk house.  I begged him to name me in the letter in a special manner, as I was going for the sake of pleasure.  He seemed glad to oblige me, and I started the same evening, and three days later I was at the “Hotel de la Conciergerie,” in Dunkirk.

An hour after my arrival I gave the charming Madame P——­ an agreeable surprise by handing her the box, and giving her her aunt’s messages.  Just as she was praising her husband, and telling me how happy she was, he came in, saying he was delighted to see me and asked me to stay in his house, without enquiring whether my stay in Dunkirk would be a long or short one.  I of course thanked him, and after promising to dine now and again at his house I begged him to take me to the banker on whom I had a letter.

The banker read my letter, and gave me the hundred louis, and asked me to wait for him at my inn where he would come for me with the governor, a M. de Barail.  This gentleman who, like most Frenchmen, was very polite, after making some ordinary enquiries, asked me to sup with him and his wife who was still at the play.  The lady gave me as kind a reception as I had received from her husband.  After we had partaken of an excellent supper several persons arrived, and play commenced in which I did not join, as I wished to study the society of the place, and above all certain officers of both services who were present.  By means of speaking with an air of authority about naval matters, and by saying that I had served in the navy of the Venetian Republic, in three days I not only knew but was intimate with all the captains of the Dunkirk fleet.  I talked at random about naval architecture, on the Venetian system of manoeuvres, and I noticed that the jolly sailors were better pleased at my blunders than at my sensible remarks.