L'Estrange, who hath endeavoured several times to speak with me. It is to
get, now and then, some newes of me, which I shall, as I see cause, give
him. He is a man of fine conversation, I think, but I am sure most
courtly and full of compliments. Thence home to dinner, and then come the
looking-glass man to set up the looking-glass I bought yesterday, in my
dining-room, and very handsome it is. So abroad by coach to White Hall,
and there to the Committee of Tangier, and then the Fishing. Mr. Povy did
in discourse give me a rub about my late bill for money that I did get of
him, which vexed me and stuck in my mind all this evening, though I know
very well how to cleare myself at the worst. So home and to my office,
where late, and then home to bed. Mighty talke there is of this Comet
that is seen a'nights; and the King and Queene did sit up last night to
see it, and did, it seems. And to-night I thought to have done so too;
but it is cloudy, and so no stars appear. But I will endeavour it. Mr.
Gray did tell me to-night, for certain, that the Dutch, as high as they
seem, do begin to buckle; and that one man in this Kingdom did tell the
King that he is offered L40,000 to make a peace, and others have been
offered money also. It seems the taking of their Bourdeaux fleete thus,
arose from a printed Gazette of the Dutch's boasting of fighting, and
having beaten the English: in confidence whereof (it coming to Bourdeaux),
all the fleete comes out, and so falls into our hands.

18th (Lord's day). To church, where, God forgive me! I spent most of my
time in looking [on] my new Morena--[a brunette]--at the other side of the
church, an acquaintance of Pegg Pen's. So home to dinner, and then to my
chamber to read Ben Johnson's Cataline, a very excellent piece, and so to
church again, and thence we met at the office to hire ships, being in
great haste and having sent for several masters of ships to come to us.
Then home, and there Mr. Andrews and Hill come and we sung finely, and by
and by Mr. Fuller, the Parson, and supped with me, he and a friend of his,
but my musique friends would not stay supper. At and after supper Mr.
Fuller and I told many storys of apparitions and delusions thereby, and I
out with my storys of Tom Mallard. He gone, I a little to my office, and
then to prayers and to bed.

19th. Going to bed betimes last night we waked betimes, and from our
people's being forced to take the key to go out to li