ress Maria Theresa
had been. The bell-ringers would have had a ring of bells for me, but
there was but one, Tim, who was too fat to pull; and I rode off before
the vicar, Doctor Bolter (who had succeeded old Mr. Texter, who had
the living in my time), had time to come out to compliment me; but the
rapscallions of the beggarly village had assembled in a dirty army to
welcome me, and cheered 'Hurrah for Masther Redmond!' as I rode away.

My people were not a little anxious regarding me, by the time I returned
to Carlow, and the landlord was very much afraid, he said, that the
highwaymen had gotten hold of me. There, too, my name and station had
been learned from my servant Fritz: who had not spared his praises of
his master, and had invented some magnificent histories concerning me.
He said it was the truth that I was intimate with half the sovereigns of
Europe, and the prime favourite with most of them. Indeed I had made
my uncle's order of the Spur hereditary, and travelled under
the name of the Chevalier Barry, chamberlain to the Duke of
Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen.

They gave me the best horses the stable possessed to carry me on my road
to Dublin, and the strongest ropes for harness; and we got on pretty
well, and there was no rencontre between the highwaymen and the pistols
with which Fritz and I were provided. We lay that night at Kilcullen,
and the next day I made my entry into the city of Dublin, with four
horses to my carriage, five thousand guineas in my purse, and one of the
most brilliant reputations in Europe, having quitted the city a beggarly
boy, eleven years before.

The citizens of Dublin have as great and laudable a desire for knowing
their neighbours' concerns as the country people have; and it is
impossible for a gentleman, however modest his desires may be (and such
mine have notoriously been through life), to enter the capital without
having his name printed in every newspaper and mentioned in a number of
societies. My name and titles were all over the town the day after my
arrival. A great number of polite persons did me the honour to call at
my lodgings, when I selected them; and this was a point very necessarily
of immediate care, for the hotels in the town were but vulgar holes,
unfit for a nobleman of my fashion and elegance. I had been informed
of the fact by travellers on the Continent; and determining to fix on
a lodging at once, I bade the drivers go slowly up and down the streets
with my