For many of these ornaments I was not so much answerable as Cornichon, whom Lauraguais lent me, and who was the intendant of my buildings during my absence abroad.  I had given the man Carte Blanche, and when he fell down and broke his leg, as he was decorating a theatre in the room which had been the old chapel of the castle, the people of the country thought it was a judgment of Heaven upon him.  In his rage for improvement the fellow dared anything.  Without my orders he cut down an old rookery which was sacred in the country, and had a prophecy regarding it, stating, ‘When the rook-wood shall fall, down goes Hackton Hall.’  The rooks went over and colonised Tiptoff Woods, which lay near us (and be hanged to them!), and Cornichon built a temple to Venus and two lovely fountains on their site.  Venuses and Cupids were the rascal’s adoration:  he wanted to take down the Gothic screen and place Cupids in our pew there; but old Doctor Huff the rector came out with a large oak stick, and addressed the unlucky architect in Latin, of which he did not comprehend a word, yet made him understand that he would break his bones if he laid a single finger upon the sacred edifice.  Cornichon made complaints about the ‘Abbe Huff,’ as he called him. (’Et quel abbe, grand Dieu!’ added he, quite bewildered, ’un abbe avec douze enfans’); but I encouraged the Church in this respect, and bade Cornichon exert his talents only in the castle.

There was a magnificent collection of ancient plate, to which I added much of the most splendid modern kind; a cellar which, however well furnished, required continual replenishing, and a kitchen which I reformed altogether.  My friend, Jack Wilkes, sent me down a cook from the Mansion House, for the English cookery,—­the turtle and venison department:  I had a chef (who called out the Englishman, by the way, and complained sadly of the Gros COCHON who wanted to meet him with coups de POING) and a couple of aides from Paris, and an Italian confectioner, as my OFFICIERS de Bouche.  All which natural appendages to a man of fashion, the odious, stingy old Tiptoff, my kinsman and neighbour, affected to view with horror; and he spread through the country a report that I had my victuals cooked by Papists, lived upon frogs, and, he verily believed, fricasseed little children.

But the squires ate my dinners very readily for all that, and old Doctor Huff himself was compelled to allow that my venison and turtle were most orthodox.  The former gentry I knew how to conciliate, too, in other ways.  There had been only a subscription pack of fox-hounds in the county and a few beggarly couples of mangy beagles, with which old Tiptoff pattered about his grounds; I built a kennel and stables, which cost L30,000, and stocked them in a manner which was worthy of my ancestors, the Irish kings.  I had two packs of hounds, and took the field in the season four times a week, with three gentlemen in my hunt-uniform to follow me, and open house at Hackton for all who belonged to the hunt.