ways with great knowledge, still with the ready
smartness of practised talkers. Anecdotes and incidents of various
kinds were narrated, quips and sharp replies abounded; and amidst much
cleverness and agreeability, a truly good-humored, convivial spirit
leavened the whole mass, and made up a most pleasant party.

So interested had I become in the conversation about me that I did not
perceive how, by degrees, I had been drawn on to talk on a variety of
subjects which travel had made me familiar with, and to speak of persons
of mark and station whom I had met and known. Still less did I remark
that I was submitted to a species of examination as to my veracity, and
that I was asked for dates, and times, and place, in a manner that might
have startled one more susceptible. Warmed with what I may dare to call
my success, and heated with wine, I grew bolder; I stigmatized as gross
ignorance and folly the policy of the English Government in maintaining
a war for what no success could ever bring back again,--the prestige of
loyalty, and the respect once tendered to nobility.

I know not into what excesses my enthusiasm may have carried me. Enough
when I say that I encountered the most brilliant talkers without fear,
and entered the list with all that the day possessed of conversational
power, without any sense of faint-heartedness. On such questions as the
military system of France, the division of parties in that country,
the probable issue to which the struggle pointed, I was, indeed, better
informed than my neighbors; but when they came to discuss the financial
condition of the French, and what it had been in the late reigns, I at
once recalled all my conversations with Law, with every detail of whose
system I was perfectly familiar.

Of the anecdotes of that time--a most amusing illustration of society
as it then existed--I remembered many; and I had the good fortune to see
that the Prince listened with evident pleasure to my recitals; and, at
last, it was in the very transport of success I found myself ascending
the stairs to the drawing-room, while O'Kelly whispered in my ear,--

"Splendidly done, by Jove! The Prince is going to invite you to Carlton
House."

After coffee was served, the party sat down to play of various
kinds,--dice, cards, and backgammon. At the Prince's whist-table there
was a vacant place, and I was invited to take it. I had twenty guineas
in gold in my pocket. They were my all in the world; but h