From Fitzroy's Private Diary (Extract 115)

I am not, in general, a man who gets bored. In fact, give me a dozen lifetimes and I believe I could comfortably fill them all to the brim.

My first love was language, and I speak ten languages fluently. I can make myself understood in another twenty or so if you include regional dialects. As most polyglots know, the more languages you learn, the easier it becomes. They fall happily into different groupings and many of them steal from each other to a remarkable extent. I do use my languages on missions, or I did when I worked abroad more frequently, but the required vocabulary was limited, ranging only between seduction, interrogation, and small talk (for fitting in). A lifetime composed solely of engaging in languages, travelling to different cultures, enjoying the art of other countries, meeting interesting people (while not having to kill them) would be almost enough.

I certainly don’t think I could spend a lifetime being a member of the upper-set. Dinners, balls, affairs, and all that become somewhat stagnant after a while. The most exercise the upper class do, other than the inevitable, almost incestuous bed-hopping, is hunting or fishing. As I heartily disapprove of blood sports, I fear I would get very bored very quickly. Also, Intelligence is not encouraged in the aristocratic gentleman, so my love of reading and learning would, at the least, be frowned upon. These are people who, even today, buy books generally because they look good in the library. Heavens forbid anyone other than a love-sick maiden searching for a romance should actually read any of them. Indeed, I think I could almost have spent a life among the dreaming spires of Oxford, reading, researching, and discovering.

Of course, I am an active man, and while I don’t precisely collect friends, I do like being in the midst of things. I am acutely observant, and as such, find much humour in observing our so-called superior classes, great men of business and even supposedly greater statesmen. In my more honest moments, and these are fortunately rare, I own that I do like creating a little mischief. If I had nothing to do but malinger among these people, I suspect I would turn into a rather dark and Machiavellian character.

I don’t particularly enjoy fighting, but I do enjoy training with my cane, learning offensive manoeuvres in Ju-Jitsu. However, I really like punching people in the face. The ones who deserve to be punched anyway, and let’s face it, there are so many. There are not many professions or pathways open to a gentleman where he can achieve this without punishment or restraint. As a spy I often get to punch the enemy, and if I do overstep the mark and punch people on my own side, or members of the upper class, there are generally little or no repercussions to myself. Of course, if I did this more often, even the powers that be might get a bit fed up with me.

Whatever I did, I would always require female company, both within and without the bedchamber, but I believe I am sufficiently entertaining to the better sex that I could accomplish this whatever path I had taken.

Thus, sadly, I must own that I am boringly predictable, and that in any of many lifetimes I would almost certainly end up in the field of espionage. I am a spy down to my fingertips (and jolly nibble-some fingertips they are too, as some of my female acquaintances can attest).