The Adventures of Roderick Random

Fellow Labourer Describes Upper Dining Guests

In the coffee-room, Mr. Medlar eagerly satisfies the narrator’s curiosity about the quality of the upper-dining guests, revealing to the narrator’s astonishment that the supposed prince is a theatre dancer and the ambassador a mere opera fiddler. The “doctor,” he explains, is a Roman Catholic priest who impersonates an officer or, more often, a physician, wheedling weak-minded people into converting from their religion; though he has repeatedly faced justice, his craftiness has limited his punishments to short imprisonments. The “general,” Medlar continues, owes his rank to influence rather than ability; now struck off the list with only a pension, he has become a malcontent railing indiscreetly against the government—spared only by his insignificance. His service is slight, yet he claims a role in every great action since the Revolution, matching every general’s story with one of his own full of gross blunders, and name-dropping Caesar, Pompey, and Alexander endlessly. Medlar notes the only way to silence him is to seize on some incongruity or ask the meaning of a difficult term, citing how the general was once silenced by a question about an “epaulement.”

Old Gentleman Questions Narrator on Travel and Jewels

Having satisfied the narrator’s curiosity, Mr. Medlar begins questioning him in turn, receiving only ambiguous answers. Assuming the narrator has travelled and that such travel is expensive, Medlar then notices a stone in his ring, mistakes it for a French composition resembling a diamond, and is corrected—somewhat sharply—when the narrator insists it is a genuine brilliant of immense value. To further impress Medlar, the narrator displays a watch with a gold chain, three gold-mounted seals, and an opal ring, claiming they cost a mere sixty or seventy guineas. Medlar, increasingly astonished, attempts to guess the narrator’s nationality—Englishman, Irishman, colonist—but each guess is denied. Exasperated, Medlar finally begs the narrator to disclose his situation and, by way of encouragement, reveals his own: a single man living comfortably on a considerable annuity, with no estate to leave and no troublesome relations, who treats the world as made for him and resolves to enjoy it while he can.