But I was spared soon the tedium and discomforts of the journey.  In spite of the clergyman’s cushion, my head, which was throbbing with pain, was brought abruptly in contact with the side of the waggon; it began to bleed afresh:  I became almost light-headed.  I only recollect having a draught of water here and there; once stopping at a fortified town, where an officer counted us:—­all the rest of the journey was passed in a drowsy stupor, from which, when I awoke, I found myself lying in a hospital bed, with a nun in a white hood watching over me.

‘They are in sad spiritual darkness,’ said a voice from the bed next to me, when the nun had finished her kind offices and retired:  ’they are in the night of error, and yet there is the light of faith in those poor creatures.’

It was my comrade of the crimp waggon, his huge broad face looming out from under a white nightcap, and ensconced in the bed beside.

‘What! you there, Herr Pastor?’ said I.

‘Only a candidate, sir,’ answered the white nightcap.  ’But, praised be Heaven! you have come to.  You have had a wild time of it.  You have been talking in the English language (with which I am acquainted) of Ireland, and a young lady, and Mick, and of another young lady, and of a house on fire, and of the British Grenadiers, concerning whom you sung us parts of a ballad, and of a number of other matters appertaining, no doubt, to your personal history.’

‘It has been a very strange one,’ said I; ’and, perhaps, there is no man in the world, of my birth, whose misfortunes can at all be compared to mine.’

I do not object to own that I am disposed to brag of my birth and other acquirements; for I have always found that if a man does not give himself a good word, his friends will not do it for him.

‘Well,’ said my fellow-patient, ’I have no doubt yours is a strange tale, and shall be glad to hear it anon; but at present you must not be permitted to speak much, for your fever has been long, and your exhaustion great.’

‘Where are we?’ I asked; and the candidate informed me that we were in the bishopric and town of Fulda, at present occupied by Prince Henry’s troops.  There had been a skirmish with an out-party of French near the town, in which a shot entering the waggon, the poor candidate had been wounded.

As the reader knows already my history, I will not take the trouble to repeat it here, or to give the additions with which I favoured my comrade in misfortune.  But I confess that I told him ours was the greatest family and finest palace in Ireland, that we were enormously wealthy, related to all the peerage descended from the ancient kings, &c.; and, to my surprise, in the course of our conversation, I found that my interlocutor knew a great deal more about Ireland than I did.  When, for instance, I spoke of my descent,—­

‘From which race of kings?’ said he.

‘Oh!’ said I (for my memory for dates was never very accurate), ‘from the old ancient kings of all.’