to find his way home in the best manner he could, while I took
care to be there before him. I afterwards understood that, in his way
to the lodgings of a friend, who lived in the skirts of the town, he was
picked up by the watch, who carried him to the round-house, from whence
he sent for clothes to his lodgings, and next morning arrived at the
door in a chair, wrapt up in a blanket he had borrowed; for his body
was so sore and swelled, that he could not bear to be confined in
his wearing apparel. He was treated with the utmost tenderness by my
mistress and her daughter, who vied with each other in their care and
attendance of him; but Lavement himself could not forbear expressing
his joy, by several malicious grins, while he ordered me to prepare an
unguent for his sores. As to myself, nobody can doubt my gratification,
when I had every day an opportunity of seeing my revenge protracted on
the body of my adversary, by the ulcers of which I had been the cause;
and, indeed, I not only enjoyed the satisfaction of having flea'd him
alive, but another also which I had not foreseen. The story of his being
attacked and stripped in such a place having been inserted in the news,
gave information to those who found his clothes next day, whither to
bring them; and accordingly he retrieved everything he had lost except a
few letters, among which was that which I had writ to him in the name
of the apothecary's wife. This, and the others, which were all on the
subject of love (for this Hibernian hero was one of those people who are
called fortune-hunters), fell into the hands of a certain female author,
famous for the scandal she has published; who, after having embellished
them with some ornaments of her own invention, gave them to the to town
in print. I was very much shocked on reflection, that I might possibly
be the occasion of a whole family's unhappiness on account of the letter
I had written; but was eased of that apprehension, when I understood
that the Chelsea apothecary had commenced a lawsuit against the
printer for defamation, and looked upon the whole as a piece of forgery
committed by the author, who had disappeared. But whatever might be his
opinion of the matter, our two ladies seemed to entertain a different
idea of it: for as soon as the pamphlet appeared, I could perceive their
care of their patient considerably diminish, till at last it ended in a
total neglect. It was impossible for him to be ignorant of this cha