I was led to believe that so soon as a very superior French army should have leisure to move against Portugal, the British army would withdraw and resign her to a fate which it could not control.
As these ideas, however erroneous and indiscreet, possessed my mind, in spite of the warlike breathings of some that I conversed with, I could not help considering my return to England as neither improbable nor very remote, and instead, therefore, of bracing myself for the field, I considered how I might render the time I passed at Lisbon as agreeable as might be, in which pursuit I expected much assistance from some letters of recommendation of which I was the bearer.
The letters on which I most depended were given me by a dear friend and relation to an Englishman of the first rank and consequence in Lisbon, who was invested with a delegated power, and supreme in his particular department, and as this personage had his family at Lisbon, an introduction to him had a very promising aspect.
My other letter, given me by a military acquaintance, was to an Austrian Chevalier, also a person of consequence in Lisbon, residing there with his family.
I could not in reason expect any great things from being the bearer of a letter from a person with whom I had no particular intimacy, and of which I was not the particular object, but only mentioned as being so good as to take charge of the letter. I carried both on the same day.
The Austrian Chevalier was laid up with the gout. I left the letter and a card.
The Englishman was also laid up with the gout. I left a letter for himself and another for his lady, and with each a card, and having thus arranged my lines I returned.
The next morning I received a note from the Austrian, contrived with the most engaging and elegant politeness, the substance of which was, that the Chevalier, sensible of the honour I had done him in bringing him a letter from his friend and mine, trusted that I would dispense with the ceremony of visiting, in favour of an invalid, and allow him and his family to make an acquaintance from which they promised themselves great pleasure, and that, when he had made my acquaintance, he trusted he should be able to persuade me to give him the pleasure of my company as much as I could, and to be a frequent inmate in his house.
It was not long before I made a second visit, and though the Chevalier was still in bed, yet his daughters were so good as to receive me, and that in so agreeable and sincere a manner, accompanied by such an honest invitation from their father, that, very much pleased, I was resolved it should not be my fault if I did not reap the full advantages of such engaging conduct.
My story with respect to the Englishman is sooner told. The fate of my letters to him will perhaps never be known, as he took not the slightest notice of them or their carrier.