was not a little disordered.

Jolter, thus baffled in all his endeavours, quitted the Bastille with a
heavy heart, and reported his fruitless negotiation to the ambassador,
who could not help breaking forth into some acrimonious expressions
against the obstinacy and insolence of the young man, who, he said,
deserved to suffer for his folly. Nevertheless, he did not desist
from his representations to the French ministry, which he found so
unyielding, that he was obliged to threaten, in plain terms, to make it
a national concern; and not only wrote to his court for instructions,
but even advised the council to make reprisals, and send some French
gentleman in London to the Tower.

This intimation had an effect upon the ministry at Versailles, who,
rather than run the risk of incensing a people whom it was neither
their interest nor inclination to disoblige, consented to discharge the
offenders, on condition that they should leave Paris in three days after
their enlargement. This proposal was readily agreed to by Peregrine, who
was now a little more tractable, and heartily tired of being cooped
up in such an uncomfortable abode, for the space of three long days,
without any sort of communication or entertainment but that which his
own imagination suggested.

CHAPTER XLVII.

Peregrine makes himself Merry at the Expense of the Painter, who curses
his Landlady, and breaks with the Doctor.

As he could easily conceive the situation of his companion in adversity,
he was unwilling to leave the place until he had reaped some diversion
from his distress, and with that view repaired to the dungeon of the
afflicted painter, to which he had by this time free access. When
he entered, the first object that presented itself to his eye was so
uncommonly ridiculous, that he could scarce preserve that gravity of
countenance which he had affected in order to execute the joke he had
planned. The forlorn Pallet sat upright in his bed in a deshabille that
was altogether extraordinary. He had laid aside his monstrous hoop,
together with his stays, gown, and petticoat, wrapped his lappets
about his head by way of nightcap, and wore his domino as a loose
morning-dress; his grizzled locks hung down about his lack-lustre
eyes and tawny neck, in all the disorder of negligence; his gray beard
bristled about half-an-inch through the remains of the paint with
which his visage had been bedaubed, and every feature of his face was
lengthen