In a certain secret and tortuous correspondence he figured as Octavius, and you may still read his sprawling script in the Record Office.

His true name, which was Nicholas Lovel, was known at Weld House, at the White Horse Tavern, and the town lodgings of my lords Powis and Bellasis, but had you asked for him by that name at these quarters you would have been met by a denial of all knowledge.

For it was a name which for good reasons he and his patrons desired to have forgotten.
He was a man of not yet forty, furtive, ill-looking and lean to emaciation.

In complexion he was as swarthy as the King, and his feverish black eyes were set deep under his bushy brows.

A badly dressed peruke concealed his hair.