imagined, we began to receive verbal messages from you that no more
time was to be lost, and that the Chevalier should come away. No
man was, I believe, ever so embarrassed as I found myself at that
time. I could not imagine that you would content yourselves by
loose verbal messages, after all that had happened, to call us over;
and I knew by experience how little such messages are to be depended
on. For soon after I engaged in these affairs, a monk arrived at
Bar, despatched, as he affirmed, by the Duke of Ormond, in whose
name he insisted that the Chevalier should hasten into Britain, and
that nothing but his presence was wanting to place the crown on his
head. The fellow delivered his errand so positively, and so
circumstantially, that the resolution was taken at Bar to set out,
and my rendezvous to join the Chevalier was appointed me. This
method to fetch a King, with as little ceremony as one would invite
a friend to supper, appeared somewhat odd to me, who was then very
new in these affairs. But when I came to talk with the man, for by
good luck he had been sent for from Bar to Paris, I easily discerned
that he had no such commission as he pretended to, and that he acted
of his own head. I presumed to oppose the taking any resolution
upon his word, though he was a monk: and soon after we knew from
the Duke of Ormond himself that he had never sent him.

This example made me cautious; but that which determined my opinion
was, that I could never imagine, without supposing you all run mad,
that the same men who judged this attempt unripe for execution,
unless supported by regular troops from France, or at least by all
the other assistances which are enumerated above, while the design
was much more secret than at present; when the King had no fleet at
sea, nor more than eight thousand men dispersed over the whole
island; when we had the good wishes of the French Court on our side,