morose Count Dautel. Close confinement, (though in the
postmaster's house,) with the unusual smell of the stoves, (for it was
in the cold month of March,) made me very ill, and worse, in all
probability, should have been, had I not obtained the liberty of the
town, which, after many fruitless solicitations, I despaired, from the
ill-natured governor, nor should ever have had, were it not by the
pressing instance of Father Cripps, a German Franciscan friar, of the
convent of Luxembourg, whom they called there Heer[1] Cripps, being
confessor to the governor, and having been once sent on a message of
moment from him to the king of Spain, Philip the Fifth, now reigning.

This Father was really a good man, and a man of honour; him I gained by
the good-nature of the postmaster, whose son was then in his noviceship,
in the noviciate of their Order at Ulflingen. I need not tell you, that
by noviceship is meant that year of probation, which those who have a
mind to enter into any religious order in the church of Rome, must pass
through, before they can be professed, or take their vows. This you,
who have been abroad, must know as well as I.

This good father, with much ado, obtained what I desired from the
governor, who he said was, _homo mirabilis in negotiis suis_, which, by
the sequel of his discourse, I understood signified, a very strange man
in his affairs. Gratitude obliged me to invite this reverend father to a
glass of Rhenish, the wine of the country, which, he frankly accepted of
in the afternoon, and, indeed, drank very plentifully, more Germanorum,
as you have described. But though he would drink largely as well as his
companion, yet I must own, that in none of the many merry bouts we had
together (for he visited me very often afterwards, as I did him, I never
saw him so far advanced as to lose his reason) he never failed a large
glass brimful to St. Boniface, which he drank to the pious memory of the
good Father, _ad piam memoriam boni patris_, and sometimes only to the
good Father, _ad bonum patrem_. I found afterwards the same laudable
custom of St. Boniface's cup in the Low Countries, France and Italy, &c.
amongst the religious.

And now, before I subscribe myself,

Sir,

Your most obedient, &c.

give me leave to tell you, that the French religious, who do not speak
much Latin, drink healths in their own language. But I was surprised,
when I heard in a certain monastery every one of the fathers drink a