emissaries of this Court, whose commission was to amuse, had imposed upon him all along; and there were other busy people who thought to find their account in having him to themselves.  I had never been in his secret whilst we were in England together:  and from his first coming into France he was either prevailed upon by others, or, which I rather believe, he concurred with others, to keep me out of it.  The perfect indifference I showed whether I was in it or no, might carry him from acting separately, to act against me.

The whole tribe of Irish and other papists were ready to seize the first opportunity of venting their spleen against a man, who had constantly avoided all intimacy with them; who acted in the same cause, but on a different principle, and who meant no one thing in the world less than raising them to the advantages which they expected.

That these several persons, for the reasons I have mentioned, should join in a cry against me, is not very marvellous; the contrary would be so to a man who knows them as well as I do.  But that the English Tories should serve as echoes to them—­nay more, that my character should continue doubtful at best amongst you, when those who first propagated the slander are become ashamed of railing without proof, and have dropped the clamour,—­this I own that I never expected; and I may be allowed to say, that as it is an extreme surprise, so it shall be a lesson to me.

The Whigs impeached and attainted me.  They went farther—­at least, in my way of thinking, that step was more cruel than all the others--by a partial representation of facts, and pieces of facts, put together as it best suited their purpose, and published to the whole world, they did all that in them lay to expose me for a fool, and to brand me for a knave.  But then I had deserved this abundantly at their hands, according to the notions of party-justice.  The Tories have not indeed impeached nor attainted me; but they have done, and are still doing something very like to that which I took worse of the Whigs than the impeachment and attainder:  and this, after I have shown an inviolable attachment to the service, and almost an implicit obedience to the will of the party; when I am actually an outlaw, deprived of my honours, stripped of my fortune, and cut off from my family and my country, for their sakes.

Some of the persons who have seen me here, and with whom I have had the pleasure to talk of you, may, perhaps, have told you that, far from being oppressed by that storm of misfortunes in which I have been tossed of late, I bear up against it with firmness enough, and even with alacrity.  It is true, I do so; but it is true likewise that the last burst of the cloud has gone near to overwhelm me.  From our enemies we expect evil treatment of every sort, we are prepared for it, we are animated by it, and we sometimes triumph in it; but when our friends abandon us, when they wound us, and when they take, to do this, an occasion where we stand the most in need of their support, and have the best title to it, the firmest mind finds it hard to resist.