I found a youth of 18 sitting in the house quite genteely dressed whom I immediately recognized from his physiognomy to be an American…and we had a great deal of conversation…He was a deserter from our army, on which I questioned him, and he replied, that his name was Griffith, he had enlisted in Philadelphia; arrived at New Orleans and deserted as soon as possible; that the Spaniards had treated him much better than his own countrymen, and that he should never return. I was extremely astonished at his insolence, and mortified that I should have been betrayed into any polite conduct towards the scoundrel. I told him “that it was astonishing he should have had the impertinence to address himself to me knowing that I was an American officer.” He muttered something about being in a country where he was protected, &c. on which I told him “if he again opened his mouth to me, I would instantly chastize him, notwithstanding his supposed protection.” He was silent, and I called up one of my soldiers and told him in his hearing, that if he attempted to mix with them to turn him out of company, which they executed by leading him to the door….

When dinner was nearly ready, I sent a message to the proprietor, that “we assumed no right to say whom he should introduce to his table, but, that we should think it a great indignity offered to a Spanish officer to attempt to set him down at the same board with a deserter from their army; and that, if the man who was at the table in the morning, was to make his appearance again, we should decline eating at it.”