Thus on one occasion an Irish toady invited him to dinner:  the duke talked of his wardrobe, then sadly defective; what suit should he wear?  The Hibernian suggested black velvet.  ‘Could you recommend a tailor?’ ‘Certainly.’  Snip came, an expensive suit was ordered, put on, and the dinner taken.  In due course the tailor called for his money.  The duke was not a bit at a loss, though he had but a few francs to his name.  ‘Honest man,’ quoth he, ’you mistake the matter entirely.  Carry the bill to Sir Peter; for know that whenever I consent to wear another man’s livery, my master pays for the clothes,’ and inasmuch as the dinner-giver was an Irishman, he did actually discharge the account.

At other times he would give a sumptuous entertainment, and in one way or another induce his guests to pay for it.  He was only less adroit in coining excuses than Theodore Hook, and had he lived a century later, we might have a volume full of anecdotes to give of his ways and no means.  Meanwhile his unfortunate duchess was living on the charity of friends, while her lord and master, when he could get anyone to pay for a band, was serenading young ladies.  Yet he was jealous enough of his wife at times, and once sent a challenge to a Scotch nobleman, simply because some silly friend asked him if he had forbidden his wife to dance with the lord.  He went all the way to Flanders to meet his opponent; but, perhaps fortunately for the duke, Marshal Berwick arrested the Scotchman, and the duel never came off.

Whether he felt his end approaching, or whether he was sick of vile pleasures which he had recklessly pursued from the age of fifteen, he now, though only thirty years of age, retired for a time to a convent, and was looked on as a penitent and devotee.  Penury, doubtless, cured him in a measure, and poverty, the porter of the gates of heaven, warned him to look forward beyond a life he had so shamefully misused.  But it was only a temporary repentance; and when he left the religious house, he again rushed furiously into every kind of dissipation.

At length, utterly reduced to the last extremities, he bethought himself of his colonelcy in Spain, and determined to set out to join his regiment.  The following letter from a friend who accompanied him will best show what circumstances he was in:—­

’Paris, June 1, 1729.

’Dear Sir,—­I am just returned from the Gates of Death, to return you Thanks for your last kind Letter of Accusations, which I am persuaded was intended as a seasonable Help to my Recollection, at a Time that it was necessary for me to send an Inquisitor General into my Conscience, to examine and settle all the Abuses that ever were committed in that little Court of Equity; but I assure you, your long Letter did not lay so much my Faults as my Misfortunes before me, which believe me, dear ——­, have fallen as heavy and as thick upon me as the Shower of Hail upon us two in E——­ Forest, and has left me much at a Loss which way to turn myself.