about his own reputation, and
instead of leaving his exploits and adventures to be written up by other
people,--that is, if any one should think it worth while to do so,--he
took that business into his own hands. He was well educated, he had
been brought up in good society, and as he desired to return to that
society it was natural for him to wish to paint his own portrait as a
buccaneer. Pictures of that kind as they were ordinarily executed were
not at all agreeable to the eyes of the cultivated classes of France,
and so M. de Lussan determined to give his personal attention not only
to his business speculations, but to his reputation. He went out as a
buccaneer in order to rob the Spaniards of treasure with which to pay
his honest debts, and, in order to prevent his piratical career being
described in the coarse and disagreeable fashion in which people
generally wrote about pirates, he determined to write his own
adventures.

If a man wishes to appear well before the world, it is often a very good
thing for him to write his autobiography, especially if there is
anything a little shady in his career, and it may be that de Lussan's
reputation as a high-minded pirate depends somewhat on the book he wrote
after he had put down the sword and taken up the pen; but if he gave a
more pleasing color to his proceedings than they really deserved, we
ought to be glad of it. For, even if de Lussan the buccaneer was in some
degree a creature of the imagination of de Lussan the author, we have a
story which is much more pleasing and, in some respects, more romantic
than stories of ordinary pirates could possibly be made unless the
writer of such stories abandoned fact altogether and plunged blindly
into fiction.

Among the good qualities of de Lussan was a pious disposition. He had
always been a religious person, and, being a Catholic, he had a high
regard and veneration for religious buildings, for priests, and for the
services of the church, and when he had crossed the Atlantic in his
ship, the crew of which was composed of desperadoes of various nations,
and when he had landed upon the western continent, he wished still to
conform to the religious manners and customs of the old world.

Having a strong force under his command and possessing, in common with
most of the gentlemen of that period, a good military education, it was
not long after he landed on the mainland before he captured a small
town. The resistance which he me