Being scrupulous of the character which my hero shall maintain for strict honesty, I here enjoin the reader to remember the circumstances under which General Roger Potter, ruler over all Kalorama, was constrained to commit a theft so small as that of the mule and the priest’s gown.  Life is sweet with the greatest heroes; and let no man question the means by which they seek to preserve it until he has felt the halter about his own neck.

Know then, that while the priests were pursuing their blind way, eager for a victim, the retreating ruler, being hungry and anxious, was entering the cabin of a poor peasant woman, having travelled some twenty miles on the road without stopping.  No sooner did the poor woman see him than she fell upon her knees, crossed herself and began saying her beads.  In short she paid reverence to him in so many ways that he became alarmed lest she go mad with joy; for being clad in the garb of a priest, and in his bare feet, she mistook him for one of those good and holy men who go over the country renouncing the vanities of the world, and setting an example to others by the terrible penance paid with the soles of their feet.  And when she had paid him reverence to her satisfaction, she bid her children provide fodder for his mule, for she saw the animal was in a lather and seriously jaded.  “Madam, I am General Roger Potter, ruler over this nation.  Being in pursuit of my army, pray tell me if you have seen it straying this way;” spoke the general, with becoming courtesy.  But as neither could understand a word the other said, matters became singularly confused, and to all the general’s questions, the good woman would answer by placing her hands to her bosom, looking heavenward with appealing sweetness, and whispering:  “Holy virgin!”

“Faith of my mother!” exclaimed the general, as he concealed the condition of his legs with the priest’s gown, “I am not the person she takes me for-that’s certain!” Soon she brought water and washed his feet, combed and perfumed his beard (which was excessively dirty), and indeed bestowed so many little kindnesses that his heart was moved, and he not only shed tears, but said within himself:  “Honestly, it is better to have peace and comfort in a cabin like this (for the smiles of this good woman seem to have much of heaven in them), than to rule king over a nation, and live in a palace when there is no safety against being hanged.  Truly, I begin to feel that my ambition has made me a great fool.”  In washing his feet, the good woman discovered the true condition of his raiment, though it was by the merest accident.  The good man, she said within herself, has in his anxiety to do penance forgotten to arrange his robes.  In the tenderest manner, then, she brought him the breeches and doublet of her dead husband, for whose soul she beseeched him to pray.  The application of the garments he readily understood; but for the prayers, the good woman had to accept the will for the deed.