er
know I was alive might do her some prejudice, in case of her settling,
or marrying anybody."

"Alas," says Amy, "marry! Who will marry her in the poor condition she
is in?" And so their discourse ended for that time.

All this was mere talk on both sides, and words of course; for on
farther inquiry, Amy found that he had no such offer of a lieutenant's
commission, or anything like it; and that he rambled in his discourse
from one thing to another; but of that in its place.

You may be sure that this discourse, as Amy at first related it, was
moving to the last degree upon me, and I was once going to have sent him
the eight thousand livres to purchase the commission he had spoken of;
but as I knew his character better than anybody, I was willing to search
a little farther into it, and so I set Amy to inquire of some other of
the troop, to see what character he had, and whether there was anything
in the story of a lieutenant's commission or no.

But Amy soon came to a better understanding of him, for she presently
learnt that he had a most scoundrel character; that there was nothing of
weight in anything he said; but that he was, in short, a mere sharper,
one that would stick at nothing to get money, and that there was no
depending on anything he said; and that more especially about the
lieutenant's commission, she understood that there was nothing at all in
it, but they told her how he had often made use of that sham to borrow
money, and move gentlemen to pity him and lend him money, in hopes to
get him preferment; that he had reported that he had a wife and five
children in England, who he maintained out of his pay, and by these
shifts had run into debt in several places; and upon several complaints
for such things, he had been threatened to be turned out of the _gens
d'armes_; and that, in short, he was not to be believed in anything he
said, or trusted on any account.

Upon this information, Amy began to cool in her farther meddling with
him, and told me it was not safe for me to attempt doing him any good,
unless I resolved to put him upon suspicions and inquiries which might
be to my ruin, in the condition I was now in.

I was soon confirmed in this part of his character, for the next time
that Amy came to talk with him, he discovered himself more effectually;
for, while she had put him in hopes of procuring one to advance the
money for the lieutenant's commission for him upon easy conditions, he
by degree