The story of Burton's adventures having spread abroad, people now took the trouble to invent many incidents that were untrue. They circulated, for example, a grisly tale of a murder which he was understood to have committed on a man who had penetrated his disguise, 137 and, the tale continuing to roll, the murder became eventually two murders. Unfortunately, Burton was cursed with a very foolish habit, and one that later did him considerable harm. Like Lord Byron, he delighted to shock. His sister had often reproved him for it after his return from India, but without effecting a change. Kindly listeners hardly knew how to take him, while the malicious made mischief. One day, in England, when, in the presence of his sister and a lady friend, he had thought fit to enlarge on a number of purely fictitious misdeeds, he was put to some shame. His sister having in vain tried by signs to stop him, the friend at last cut him short with: "Am I to admire you, Mr. Burton?" And he accepted the reproof. Still, he never broke himself of this dangerous habit; indeed, when the murder report spread abroad he seems to have been rather gratified than not; and he certainly took no trouble to refute the calumny.

On another occasion he boasted of his supposed descent from Louis XIV. "I should have thought," exclaimed a listener, "that you who have such good Irish blood in your veins would be glad to forget your descent from a dishonourable union."

"Oh, no," replied Burton vehemently, "I would rather be the bastard of a king than the son of an honest man."

Though this was at the time simply intended to shock, nevertheless it illustrated in a sense his real views. He used to insist that the offspring of illicit or unholy unions were in no way to be pitied if they inherited, as if often the case, the culture or splendid physique of the father and the comeliness of the mother; and instanced King Solomon, Falconbridge, in whose "large composition," could be read tokens of King Richard, 138 and the list of notables from Homer to "Pedro's son," as catalogued by Camoens 139 who said:

The real persons to be pitied, he said, were the mentally or physically weak, whatever their parentage.