to restore the tranquility of Pickle’s breast

Peregrine having cooled himself with a solitary walk in the park, during which the violence of his choler gradually evaporated, and his reflection was called to a serious deliberation upon the posture of his affairs, he resolved to redouble his diligence and importunity with his patron and the minister, in order to obtain some sinecure, which would indemnify him for the damage he had sustained on their account. He accordingly went to his lordship and signified his demand, after having told him, that he had suffered several fresh losses, which rendered an immediate provision of that sort necessary to his credit and subsistence. His noble friend commended him for the regard he manifested for his own interest, which he considered as a proof of his being at last detached from the careless inadvertency of youth; he approved of his demand, which he assured him should be faithfully transmitted to the minister, and backed with all his influence; and encouraged his hope, by observing, that some profitable places were at that time vacant, and, so far as he knew, unengaged.
This conversation helped to restore the tranquility of Pickle’s breast, though he still harboured resentment against Cadwallader, on account of the last insult; and on the instant he formed a plan of revenge. He knew the misanthrope’s remittances from his estate in the country had been of late very scanty, in consequence of repairs and bankruptcies among his tenants; so that, in spite of all his frugality, he had been but barely able to maintain his credit, and even that was engaged on the strength of his running rent. Being therefore intimately acquainted with the particulars of his fortune, he wrote a letter to Crabtree, subscribed with the name of his principal farmer’s wife, importing that her husband being lately dead, and the greatest part of her cattle destroyed by the infectious distemper, she found herself utterly incapable of paying the rent which was due, or even of keeping the farm, unless he would, out of his great goodness, be pleased to give her some assistance, and allow her to sit free for a twelvemonth to come. This intimation he found means to convey by post from a market town adjoining to the farm, directed in the usual style to the cynic, who, seeing it stamped with the known marks, could not possibly suspect any imposition.
Hackneyed as he was in the ways of life, and steeled with his boasted stoicism, this epistle threw him into such an agony of vexation, that a double proportion of souring was visible in his aspect, when he was visited by the author, who, having observed and followed the postman at a proper distance, introduced a conversation upon his own disappointments, in which, among other circumstances of his own ill-luck, he told him, that his patron’s steward had desired to be excused from paying the last quarter of his interest precisely at the appointed term, for which reason he should be utterly void of cash, and therefore requested that Crabtree would accommodate him with an hundred pieces of his next remittance from the country.