not so happy as before. I brought him another son, and a very fine boy
it was, but it lived not above two months; nor, after the first touches
of affection (which are usual, I believe, to all mothers) were over, was
I sorry the child did not live, the necessary difficulties attending it
in our travelling being considered.
After these several perambulations, my lord told me his business began
to close, and we would think of returning to France, which I was very
glad of, but principally on account of my treasure I had there, which,
as you have heard, was very considerable. It is true I had letters very
frequently from my maid Amy, with accounts that everything was very
safe, and that was very much to my satisfaction. However, as the
prince's negotiations were at an end, and he was obliged to return, I
was very glad to go; so we returned from Venice to Turin, and in the way
I saw the famous city of Milan. From Turin we went over the mountains
again, as before, and our coaches met us at Pont à Voisin, between
Chambery and Lyons; and so, by easy journeys, we arrived safely at
Paris, having been absent two years, wanting about eleven days, as
above.
I found the little family we left just as we left them, and Amy cried
for joy when she saw me, and I almost did the same.
The prince took his leave of me the night before, for, as he told me, he
knew he should be met upon the road by several persons of quality, and
perhaps by the princess herself; so we lay at two different inns that
night, lest some should come quite to the place, as indeed it happened.
After this I saw him not for above twenty days, being taken up in his
family, and also with business; but he sent me his gentleman to tell me
the reason of it, and bid me not be uneasy, and that satisfied me
effectually.
In all this affluence of my good fortune I did not forget that I had
been rich and poor once already alternately, and that I ought to know
that the circumstances I was now in were not to be expected to last
always; that I had one child, and expected another; and if I had bred
often, it would something impair me in the great article that supported
my interest--I mean, what he called beauty; that as that declined, I
might expect the fire would abate, and the warmth with which I was now
so caressed would cool, and in time, like the other mistresses of great
men, I might be dropped again; and that therefore it was my business to
take care that I should fall as softly as I could.
I say, I did not forget, therefore, to make as good provision for
myself as if I had had nothing to have subsisted on but what I now
gained; whereas I had not less than ten thousand pounds, as I said
above, which I had amassed, or secured rather, out of the ruins of my
faithful friend the jeweller, and which he, little thinking of what was
so near him when he went out, told me, though in a kind of a jest, was
all my own, if he was knocked on the head, and which, upon that title, I
took care to preserve.
My greatest difficulty now was how to secure my wealth and to keep what
I had got; for I had greatly added to this wealth by the generous bounty
of the Prince ----, and the more by the private, retired mode of living,
which he rather desired for privacy than parsimony; for he supplied me
for a more magnificent way of life than I desired, if it had been
proper.
I shall cut short the history of this prosperous wickedness with telling
you I brought him a third son, within little more than eleven months
after our return from Italy; that now I lived a little more openly, and
went by a particular name which he gave me abroad, but which I must
omit, viz., the Countess de ----; and had coaches and servants, suitable
to the quality he had given me the appearance of; and, which is more
than usually happens in such cases, this held eight years from the
beginning, during which time, as I had been very faithful to him, so I
must say, as above, that I believe he was so separated to me, that
whereas he usually had two or three women, which he kept privately, he
had not in all that time meddled with any of them, but that I had so
perfectly engrossed him that he dropped them all. Not, perhaps, that he
saved much by it, for I was a very chargeable mistress to him, that I
must acknowledge, but it was all owing to his particular affection to
me, not to my extravagance, for, as I said, he never gave me leave to
ask him for anything, but poured in his favours and presents faster than
I expected, and so fast as I could not have the assurance to make the
least mention of desiring more. Nor do I speak this of my own guess, I
mean about his constancy to me and his quitting all other women; but the
old harridan, as I may call her, whom he made the guide of our
travelling, and who was a strange old creature, told me a thousand
stories of his gallantry, as she called it, and how, as he had no less
than three mistresses at one time, and, as I found, all of her
procuring, he had of a sudden dropped them all, and that he was entirely
lost to both her and them; that they did believe he had fallen into some
new hands, but she could never hear who, or where, till he sent for her
to go this journey; and then the old hag complimented me upon his
choice; that she did not wonder I had so engrossed him; so much beauty,
&c.; and there she stopped.
Upon the whole, I found by her what was, you may be sure, to my
particular satisfaction, viz., that, as above, I had him all my own. But
the highest tide has its ebb; and in all things of this kind there is a
reflux which sometimes, also, is more impetuously violent than the first
aggression. My prince was a man of a vast fortune, though no sovereign,
and therefore there was no probability that the expense of keeping a
mistress could be injurious to him, as to his estate. He had also
several employments, both out of France as well as in it; for, as above,
I say he was not a subject of France, though he lived in that court. He
had a princess, a wife with whom he had lived several years, and a woman
(so the voice of fame reported) the most valuable of her sex, of birth
equal to him, if not superior, and of fortune proportionable; but in
beauty, wit, and a thousand good qualities superior, not to most women,
but even to all her sex; and as to her virtue, the character which was
justly her due was that of, not only the best of princesses, but even
the best of women.
They lived in the utmost harmony, as with such a princess it was
impossible to be otherwise. But yet the princess was not insensible that
her lord had his foibles, that he did make some excursions, and
particularly that he had one favourite mistress, which sometimes
engrossed him more than she (the princess) could wish, or be easily
satisfied with. However, she was so good, so generous, so truly kind a
wife, that she never gave him any uneasiness on this account; except so
much as must arise from his sense of her bearing the affront of it with
such patience, and such a profound respect for him as was in itself
enough to have reformed him, and did sometimes shock his generous mind,
so as to keep him at home, as I may call it, a great while together. And
it was not long before I not only perceived it by his absence, but
really got a knowledge of the reason of it, and once or twice he even
acknowledged it to me.
It was a point that lay not in me to manage. I made a kind of motion
once or twice to him to leave me, and keep himself to her, as he ought
by the laws and rites of matrimony to do, and argued the generosity of
the princess to him, to persuade him; but I was a hypocrite, for had I
prevailed with him really to be honest, I had lost him, which I could
not bear the thoughts of; and he might easily see I was not in earnest.
One time in particular, when I took upon me to talk at this rate, I
found, when I argued so much for the virtue and honour, the birth, and,
above all, the generous usage he found in the person of the princess
with respect to his private amours, and how it should prevail upon him,
&c., I found it began to affect him, and he returned, "And do you
indeed," says he, "persuade me to leave you? Would you have me think
you sincere?" I looked up in his face, smiling. "Not for any other
favourite, my lord," says I; "that would break my heart; but for madam
the princess!" said I; and then I could say no more. Tears followed, and
I sat silent a while. "Well," said he, "if ever I do leave you, it shall
be on the virtuous account; it shall be for the princess; I assure you
it shall be for no other woman." "That's enough, my lord," said I;
"there I ought to submit; and while I am assured it shall be for no
other mistress, I promise your Highness I will not repine; or that, if I
do, it shall be a silent grief; it shall not interrupt your felicity."
All this while I said I knew not what, and said what I was no more able
to do than he was able to leave me; which, at that time, he owned he
could not do--no, not for the princess herself.
But another turn of affairs determined this matter, for the princess was
taken very ill, and, in the opinion of all her physicians, very
dangerously so. In her sickness she desired to speak with her lord, and
to take her leave of him. At this grievous parting she said so many
passionate, kind things to him, lamented that she had left him no
children (she had had three, but they were dead); hinted to him that it
was one of the chief things which gave her satisfaction in death, as to
this world, that she should leave him room to have heirs to his family,
by some princess that should supply her place; with all humility, but
with a Christian earnestness, recommended to him to do justice to such
princess, whoever it should be, from whom, to be sure, he would expect
justice; that is to say, to keep to her singly, according to the
solemnest part of the marriage covenant; humbly asked his Highness's
pardon if she had any way offended him; and appealing to Heaven, before
whose tribunal she was to appear, that she had never violated her honour
or her duty to him, and praying to Jesus and the blessed Virgin for his
Highness; and thus, with the most moving and most passionate expressions
of her affection to him, took her last leave of him, and died the next
day.
This discourse, from a princess so valuable in herself and so dear to
him, and the loss of her following so immediately after, made such deep
impressions on him that he looked back with detestation upon the former
part of his life, grew melancholy and reserved, changed his society and
much of the general conduct of his life, resolved on a life regulated
most strictly by the rules of virtue and piety, and, in a word, was
quite another man.
The first part of his reformation was a storm upon me; for, about ten
days after the princess's funeral, he sent a message to me by his
gentleman, intimating, though in very civil terms, and with a short
preamble or introduction, that he desired I would not take it ill that
he was obliged to let me know that he could see me no more. His
gentleman told me a long story of the new regulation of life his lord
had taken up; and that he had been so afflicted for the loss of his
princess that he thought it would either shorten his life or he would
retire into some religious house, to end his days in solitude.
I need not direct anybody to suppose how I received this news. I was
indeed exceedingly surprised at it, and had much ado to support myself
when the first part of it was delivered, though the gentleman delivered
his errand with great respect, and with all the regard to me that he was
able, and with a great deal of ceremony, also telling me how much he was
concerned to bring me such a message.
But when I heard the particulars of the story at large, and especially
that of the lady's discourse to the prince a little before her death, I
was fully satisfied. I knew very well he had done nothing but what any
man must do that had a true sense upon him of the justice of the
princess's discourse to him, and of the necessity there was of his
altering his course of life, if he intended to be either a Christian or
an honest man. I say, when I heard this I was perfectly easy. I confess
it was a circumstance that it might be reasonably expected should have
wrought something also upon me; I that had so much to reflect upon more
than the prince; that had now no more temptation of poverty, or of the
powerful motive which Amy used with me--namely, comply and live, deny
and starve; I say, I that had no poverty to introduce vice, but was
grown not only well supplied, but rich; and not only rich, but was very
rich; in a word, richer than I knew how to think of, for the truth of it
was, that thinking of it sometimes almost distracted me, for want of
knowing how to dispose of it, and for fear of losing it all again by
some cheat or trick, not knowing anybody that I could commit the trust
of it to.
Besides, I should add, at the close of this affair, that the prince did
not, as I may say, turn me off rudely and with disgust, but with all the
decency and goodness peculiar to himself, and that could consist with a
man reformed and struck with the sense of his having abused so good a
lady as his late princess had been. Nor did he send me away empty, but
did everything like himself; and, in particular, ordered his gentleman
to pay the rent of the house and all the expense of his two sons, and to
tell me how they were taken care of, and where, and also that I might at
all times inspect the usage they had, and if I disliked anything it
should be rectified; and having thus finished everything, he retired
into Lorraine, or somewhere that way, where he had an estate, and I
never heard of him more--I mean, not as a mistress.
Now I was at liberty to go to any part of the world, and take care of my
money myself. The first thing that I resolved to do was to go directly
to England, for there, I thought, being among my country-folks--for I
esteemed myself an Englishwoman, though I was born in France--there, I
say, I thought I could better manage things than in France; at least,
that I would be in less danger of being circumvented and deceived; but
how to get away with such a treasure as I had with me was a difficult
point, and what I was greatly at a loss about.
There was a Dutch merchant in Paris, that was a person of great
reputation for a man of substance and of honesty, but I had no manner of
acquaintance with him, nor did I know how to get acquainted with him, so
as to discover my circumstances to him; but at last I employed my maid
Amy (such I must be allowed to call her, notwithstanding what has been
said of her, because she was in the place of a maid-servant); I say, I
employed my maid Amy to go to him, and she got a recommendation to him
from somebody else, I knew not who, so that she got access to him well
enough.
But now was my case as bad as before, for when I came to him what could
I do? I had money and jewels to a vast value, and I might leave all
those with him; that I might indeed do; and so I might with several
other merchants in Paris, who would give me bills for it, payable at
London; but then I ran a hazard of my money, and I had nobody at London
to send the bills to, and so to stay till I had an account that they
were accepted; for I had not one friend in London that I could have
recourse to, so that indeed I knew not what to do.
In this case I had no remedy but that I must trust somebody, so I sent
Amy to this Dutch merchant, as I said above. He was a little surprised
when Amy came to him and talked to him of remitting a sum of about
twelve thousand pistoles to England, and began to think she came to put
some cheat upon him; but when he found that Amy was but a servant, and
that I came to him myself, the case was altered presently.
When I came to him myself, I presently saw such a plainness in his
dealing and such honesty in his countenance that I made no scruple to
tell him my whole story, viz., that I was a widow, that I had some
jewels to dispose of, and also some money which I had a mind to send to
England, and to follow there myself; but being but a woman, and having
no correspondence in London, or anywhere else, I knew not what to do,
or how to secure my effects.
He dealt very candidly with me, but advised me, when he knew my case so
particularly, to take bills upon Amsterdam, and to go that way to
England; for that I might lodge my treasure in the bank there, in the
most secure manner in the world, and that there he could recommend me to
a man who perfectly understood jewels, and would deal faithfully with me
in the disposing them.
I thanked him, but scrupled very much the travelling so far in a strange
country, and especially with such a treasure about me; that, whether
known or concealed, I did not know how to venture with it. Then he told
me he would try to dispose of them there, that is, at Paris, and convert
them into money, and so get me bills for the whole; and in a few days he
brought a Jew to me, who pretended to buy the jewels. As soon as the Jew
saw the jewels I saw my folly, and it was ten thousand to one but I had
been ruined, and perhaps put to death in as cruel a manner as possible;
and I was put in such a fright by it that I was once upon the point of
flying for my life, and leaving the jewels and money too in the hands of
the Dutchman, without any bills or anything else. The case was thus:--
As soon as the Jew saw the jewels he falls a-jabbering, in Dutch or
Portuguese, to the merchant; and I could presently perceive that they
were in some great surprise, both of them. The Jew held up his hands,
looked at me with some horror, then talked Dutch again, and put himself
into a thousand shapes, twisting his body and wringing up his face this
way and that way in his discourse, stamping with his feet, and throwing
abroad his hands, as if he was not in a rage only, but in a mere fury.
Then he would turn and give a look at me like the devil. I thought I
never saw anything so frightful in my life.
At length I put in a word. "Sir," says I to the Dutch merchant, "what is
all this discourse to my business? What is this gentleman in all these
passions about? I wish, if he is to treat with me, he would speak that I
may understand him; or if you have business of your own between you that
is to be done first, let me withdraw, and I'll come again when you are
at leisure."
"No, no, madam," says the Dutchman very kindly, "you must not go; all
our discourse is about you and your jewels, and you shall hear it
presently; it concerns you very much, I assure you." "Concern me!" says
I. "What can it concern me so much as to put this gentleman into such
agonies, and what makes him give me such devil's looks as he does? Why,
he looks as if he would devour me."
The Jew understood me presently, continuing in a kind of rage, and spoke
in French: "Yes, madam, it does concern you much, very much, very much,"
repeating the words, shaking his head; and then turning to the Dutchman,
"Sir," says he, "pray tell her what is the case." "No," says the
merchant, "not yet; let us talk a little farther of it by ourselves;"
upon which they withdrew into another room, where still they talked very
high, but in a language I did not understand. I began to be a little
surprised at what the Jew had said, you may be sure, and eager to know
what he meant, and was very impatient till the Dutch merchant came back,
and that so impatient that I called one of his servants to let him know
I desired to speak with him. When he came in I asked his pardon for
being so impatient, but told him I could not be easy till he had told me
what the meaning of all this was. "Why, madam," says the Dutch merchant,
"in short, the meaning is what I am surprised at too. This man is a Jew,
and understands jewels perfectly well, and that was the reason I sent
for him, to dispose of them to him for you; but as soon as he saw them,
he knew the jewels very distinctly, and flying out in a passion, as you
see he did, told me, in short, that they were the very parcel of jewels
which the English jeweller had about him who was robbed going to
Versailles, about eight years ago, to show them the Prince de ----, and
that it was for these very jewels that the poor gentleman was murdered;
and he is in all this agony to make me ask you how you came by them; and
he says you ought to be charged with the robbery and murder, and put to
the question to discover who were the persons that did it, that they
might be brought to justice." While he said this the Jew came impudently
back into the room without calling, which a little surprised me again.
The Dutch merchant spoke pretty good English, and he knew that the Jew
did not understand English at all, so he told me the latter part, when
he came into the room, in English, at which I smiled, which put the Jew
into his mad fit again, and shaking his head and making his devil's
faces again, he seemed to threaten me for laughing, saying, in French,
this was an affair I should have little reason to laugh at, and the
like. At this I laughed again, and flouted him, letting him see that I
scorned him, and turning to the Dutch merchant, "Sir," says I, "that
those jewels were belonging to Mr. ----, the English jeweller" (naming
his name readily), "in that," says I, "this person is right; but that I
should be questioned how I came to have them is a token of his
ignorance, which, however, he might have managed with a little more good
manners, till I told him who I am, and both he and you too will be more
easy in that part when I should tell you that I am the unhappy widow of
that Mr. ---- who was so barbarously murdered going to Versailles, and
that he was not robbed of those jewels, but of others, Mr. ---- having
left those behind him with me, lest he should be robbed. Had I, sir,
come otherwise by them, I should not have been weak enough to have
exposed them to sale here, where the thing was done, but have carried
them farther off."
This was an agreeable surprise to the Dutch merchant, who, being an
honest man himself, believed everything I said, which, indeed, being all
really and literally true, except the deficiency of my marriage, I spoke
with such an unconcerned easiness that it might plainly be seen that I
had no guilt upon me, as the Jew suggested.
The Jew was confounded when he heard that I was the jeweller's wife. But
as I had raised his passion with saying he looked at me with the devil's
face, he studied mischief in his heart, and answered, that should not
serve my turn; so called the Dutchman out again, when he told him that
he resolved to prosecute this matter farther.
There was one kind chance in this affair, which, indeed, was my
deliverance, and that was, that the fool could not restrain his passion,
but must let it fly to the Dutch merchant, to whom, when they withdrew a
second time, as above, he told that he would bring a process against me
for the murder, and that it should cost me dear for using him at that
rate; and away he went, desiring the Dutch merchant to tell him when I
would be there again. Had he suspected that the Dutchman would have
communicated the particulars to me, he would never have been so foolish
as to have mentioned that part to him.
But the malice of his thoughts anticipated him, and the Dutch merchant
was so good as to give me an account of his design, which, indeed, was
wicked enough in its nature; but to me it would have been worse than
otherwise it would to another, for, upon examination, I could not have
proved myself to be the wife of the jeweller, so the suspicion might
have been carried on with the better face; and then I should also have
brought all his relations in England upon me, who, finding by the
proceedings that I was not his wife, but a mistress, or, in English, a
whore, would immediately have laid claim to the jewels, as I had owned
them to be his.
This thought immediately rushed into my head as soon as the Dutch
merchant had told me what wicked things were in the head of that cursed
Jew; and the villain (for so I must call him) convinced the Dutch
merchant that he was in earnest by an expression which showed the rest
of his design, and that was, a plot to get the rest of the jewels into
his hand.
When first he hinted to the Dutchman that the jewels were such a man's
(meaning my husband's), he made wonderful exclamations on account of
their having been concealed so long. Where must they have lain? And what
was the woman that brought them? And that she (meaning me) ought to be
immediately apprehended and put into the hands of justice. And this was
the time that, as I said, he made such horrid gestures and looked at me
so like a devil.
The merchant, hearing him talk at that rate, and seeing him in earnest,
said to him, "Hold your tongue a little; this is a thing of consequence.
If it be so, let you and I go into the next room and consider of it
there;" and so they withdrew, and left me.