! m
m
MEMOIRS
OF THE
CHEVALIER DE JOHNSTONS.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL FRENCH
M.S. OF THE CHEVALIER.
BY
CHAELES WINCHESTER
ADVOCATE, ABERDEEN.
VOLUME SECOND,
ABERDEEN : D. WYLLIE & SON,
iff ijj*
AND H.R.H. THE PRINCE OF WALES.
1871.
G. CORNWALL AND SONS, PEINTEES AND LITHOGRAPHERS, ABERDEEN.
PREFACE
TO THE
SECOND AND THIRD VOLUMES
OF THE
irs of % Cjjefmlkr to J0|msf0ite.
THE favourable reception given by my friends and the public
to the translation of the First Volume of the Memoirs of the
Chevalier de Johnstone, not less than the flattering notices in
Reviews of the work, and the generous and unsolicited pat-
ronage of my friend, Mr. LESLIE of Powis, the great-grand
nephew of the Chevalier, and the honoured owner of the
original M.S., of which the Translator has had such abundant
use, have combined to induce me to answer the calls from
many different quarters to give the remaining two volumes
to the public. I hope my doing so will not be thought imper-
tinent or presumptuous in taxing the liberality of my friends
and supporters, for whom I feel the highest regard, and for
whose kindness I am bound to offer my warmest thanks and
gratitude ; and in bidding them farewell, I hope they will be
as much pleased with these two remaining volumes as they
have been pleased to express themselves satisfied with the
first.
2
As already stated, the Second Volume contains a narrative
of the adventures and hair-breadth escapes of the Chevalier
after the Battle of Culloden, till his final escape to Holland,
disguised as a domestic in the suite of Lady Jean Douglas ;
and subsequently of his entering the military service of
France, and proceeding to Canada, with the rank of Captain.
The Third Volume contains the History of the War in
Canada, in which the Chevalier could not take part against
his native country ; and having made known his peculiar situ-
ation to the French General Montcalm, His Excellency at
once absolved him from his engagement. In this way,
although a non-combatant, he had the best opportunities of
.seeing and describing the operations in that celebrated cam-
paign, in which the immortal Wolfe and General Montcalm
both fell on the Heights of Abraham, on the same day.
ABERDEEN, April, 1871.
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MEMOIES
OF
THE CHEVALIER DE JOHNSTONE.
f okrne
GIVING AN ACCOUNT OF HIS HAIRBREADTH ESCAPES AFTER
THE BATTLE OF CULLODEN, TILL HIS FINAL ESCAPE TO
HOLLAND IN THE SUITE OF LADY JEAN DOUGLAS,
DISGUISED AS A SERVANT, AND ENTERING THE FRENCH
SERVICE, AND PROCEEDING TO CANADA.
HE Battle of Culloden, which was lost the 16th of
April, more through a series of bad conduct on
our part since that of Falkirk, than by any able
management of the Duke of Cumberland, in
terminating the expedition of Prince Edward,
opened scenes of horror to his partisans. The
ruin of many of the most illustrious houses of Scotland fol-
lowed in a moment the loss of that battle. The scaffolds of
England were for a long time innundated every day with the
blood of a great number of the gentlemen and Peers of Scot-
land, the executions of whom furnished a spectacle to amuse
the English populace, naturally of a character cruel and bar-
barous ; and the confiscation of their fortunes immediately re-
duced their families to beggary. Those who had the good
fortune to save themselves in foreign countries were consoled
for all that they had lost by having escaped a tragical death by
the hand of the executioner, and looked upon themselves as once
more highly fortunate ; above all, by the humanity and com-
passion of His Most Christian Majesty, who, in according to
them an asylum in France, provided, at the same time, for
their subsistence by a guaranteed fund of forty thousand
livres per annum, which was distributed in pensions to those
unfortunate Scotch victims of their fidelity to their legitimate
Prince. These pensions had always been paid regularly ; but
in the partition of this fund they had not always followed the
intentions of His Majesty, who had destined it solely to the
Scots in the suite of Prince Edward.
As soon as the Duke of Cumberland was assured by the
total dispersion of the Highlanders at Ruthven that he
had nothing more to fear of seeing them re-appear with
arms in their hands, he divided his army into different de-
tachments, that he might send them to scour the country of
the Highlanders, with a view to sack their habitations and
make prisoners. These detachments, as the executioners of
the Duke of Cumberland, perpetrated the most horrible
cruelties, burning the mansions of the Chiefs of clans,
violating their wives and daughters, making it an amusement
to themselves to catch the unfortunate Highlanders whenever
they fell into their hands, and in that surpassing in barbarity
the savages of America, the most ferocious.* In the mean-
time, the principal object that the Duke had in view by these
detachments was to seize Prince Edward, who escaped with
much difficulty from their vigilance, although pursued very
hotly; and in his instructions to commandants of detach-
ments, he recommended them always not to make prisoners,
*The Duke of Cumberland- is dead, universally detested among Christian
powers for the unheard of cruelties which he had perpetrated in Scotland.
One may apply to him that which is said by Herodotus, that the Deity
proportions punishments to crimes ; and that for great offences, punish-
ments are always great, for he had his body consumed with corruption by
the violence of his disease during many years before his entire dissolution
leaving unto posterity but the remembrance that there could have existed,
under a human shape, a monster so ferocious and unnatural.
but to poinard them on the spot. In point of fact, the Court
of London had been greatly embarrassed as to having such a
prisoner the Parliament of England not seeing their way
to bring him to trial as a subject of Great Britain by his in-
contestable right to the crown. They sent, at the sametime,
orders to all the towns and villages on the borders of the two
arms of the sea, between Inverness and Edinburgh, not to
allow any person to pass without a passport from the Duke of
Cumberland or the Magistrates of Edinburgh ; and the same
in all the seaports of Great Britain, prohibiting all captains
of merchant vessels to receive any one on board without a
passport, or to contribute in any manner to the help of a
rebel, a name which they then gave to us as vanquished, in
place of heroes, if we were taken, under the pain of high
treason, to be prosecuted criminally, and subjected to the
same punishment as those who had taken up arms. The
Duke of Cumberland detached at the same time his cavalry
in the low country, at the entrance of the hills, to arrest all
those who should present themselves without passports to
cross the first arm of the sea, with orders to keep up con-
tinual patrols the whole length of the coast, and to keep a
look out through all the cities and villages in the vicinity of
the sea. Thus, by all these arrangements, it had become diffi-
cult, almost impossible, to save themselves from the fury of
this sanguinary Duke, who, by the excess of his unheard of
cruelties among civilized nations, fell at last into discredit
and into contempt of all honest men of the English nation,
of those even who never were partisans of the House of
Stuart, and he procured for himself at London the sou-
briquet of " The Butcher."*
In all the troublesome positions in which I have found
myself involved, having been preserved in foreign lands, Pro-
* The Duke of Cumberland was obliged to have an Act of Parliament to
indemnify him for the cruelties he had committed in Scotland, contrary to
the laws of the Realm, and to shelter him from prosecutions.
8
vidence seemed always there to plunge me into unfortunate
encounters impossible to be foreseen, and to cause me to
touch often very closely to the scaffold, holding me in the
end by the hand to draw me from the precipice, as if the
Supreme Being wished to manifest to me all his power and
his infinite goodness. All the course of my life has been the
same having often found myself ready to perish without the
least appearance or probability of escaping death, but saved
as by a miracle when I was resigned to die. The long train
of pains and excessive miseries which I had experienced
almost without interruption were not without their uses to
me, since they made me approbate tranquillity of spirit
and health as real inestimable riches, and rendered me con-
tent with simple necessaries of life, without ambition, without
desire of abundance of fortune, nor forgetful of their magnifi-
cence, I desired only always to have serenity of soul, and to
pass the rest of my days without chagrin and without
inquietude.* It is certain that the cessation of pains and
persecutions produces pleasure and a happy state.
My friendship for the unfortunate Macdonald of Scot-
house, who was killed at my side at the Battle of Culloden,
had engaged me to accompany him to the charge with his
regiment. We were on the left of our army, and at the
distance of about twenty paces from the enemy, when the
rout commenced to become general, before even we had made
our charge on the left. Almost at the same instant that I
* "It is certain, says Lady Wortley Montague, "that there are no real
pleasures but of the senses ; and the life of man is so short that he ought
not to dream but to make the present agreeable." " Moderation of con-
duct," says a Chinese author, " is a virtue which takes its source in tran-
quility of soul. When we repress the violence of the passions, when we
accustom ourselves to face with cool deliberation the accidents of life when
we always put a guard against every troublesome impression when we
combat without ceasing the first impulses of a blind choler when we give
.ourselves time to weigh all we shall enjoy therefrom that tranquility of
soul of which moderation in all things will be the fruit." Military Art of the
Chinese.
saw poor Scot fall, (the most worthy man that I had ever
known, and with whom I had been allied in friendship the
most pure from the commencement of the expedition,) to the
increase of my horror, I beheld the Highlanders around me
turning their backs to fly. I remained at first immoveable
and stupefied. I fired with fury my blunderbuss and pistols
upon the enemy, and I endeavoured immediately to save
myself like the others ; but having charged on foot and in
boots, I felt myself so fatigued by the marshy ground, in
which there was water up to my ankle, that in place of
running, with pain could I march. I had left my servant,
Robertson, upon the eminence with my horses, where
the Prince was during the battle, about three hundred toises
behind us, ordering him always to hold by the servants of the
Prince, in order that I might be able more easily to find my
horses in case I should have need of them. My first atten-
tion on returning was to fix my eyes upon that eminence, to
discover Robertson. It was in vain. I neither saw the
Prince, nor his servants, nor anybody on horseback all being
already gone and out of sight. I only saw a terrible plat-
form the field of battle, from the right to the left of our
army, all covered with Highlanders dispersed and running all
that their legs could carry them, to save themselves. Not
being able longer to sustain myself upon my legs, and the
enemy always advancing very slowly, but redoubling their
fire my mind agitated and 'fluctuating with indecision, in
doubt whether I should be killed or whether I should sur-
render myself a prisoner, which was a thousand times worse
than death upon the field of battle all on a sudden I per-
ceived a horse about thirty paces before me, which had not a
horseman upon it. The idea of still having it in my power
to save myself, gave me new strength, and inspired me with
agility. I ran and seized the bridle, which was entangled
about the arms of a man extended upon the ground, whom I
believed to be dead ; but I was confounded when the cowardly
10
poltroon, who had no other hurt than fright, dared to remain
in the most horrible fire to dispute with me the horse, at
about twenty paces from the enemy, all my menaces not
being able to make him quit the bridle. While we were
disputing together, there came a burst of a cannon charge
with grape shot, which fell at my feet, and which covered us
with mud, but without making any impression upon this
original, who remained constantly determined to retain the
horse. Fortunately for me there passed close to us, Finlay
Cameron, an officer of the regiment of Lochiel, a big, young
man, of about twenty years of age, six feet high, brave, and
heroic. I called him to mine aid " Oh, Finlay," said I to
him, "this man will not give me up this horse." Poor
Finlay joined me at the instant as a shock of lightning,
presented a pistol immediately at the head of this man, and
threatened to blow out his brains if he hesitated a moment to
quit the bridle. This man, who had the appearance of a
servant, then took his resolution to take himself off with a
good grace. In possession of the horse, I attempted, with
many ineffectual strides, to mount on horseback, but I made
these ineffectual attempts in vain. Finding myself without
strength, and totally done up, I recalled again poor Finlay,
who was already some paces distant from me, to assist me to
mount. He returned, lifted me up easily in his arms like an
infant, and placed me on the horse, across as a sack full,
giving, at the same time, a stroke to the horse to make him
go off, then offering me his wishes that I might have the good
fortune to escape, he flew off like a hart, and was instantly
out of sight. We were not at the time more distant from the
enemy than about twenty-five paces when he left me. When
I found myself about thirty or forty paces off, I then adjusted
myself upon the horse, placed my feet in the stirrup, running
as fast as the bad jade was capable of. I was under too
much obligation to Finlay Cameron not to have searched
continually to inform myself of his fate, but without ever
11
having had the least light thrown upon it. This trait was
far more noble and generous on his part, as I had never
any particular connection with him. How difficult it is
to know men ! I had always known from the commence-
ment of our expedition that I was aide-de-camp to Lord
George Murray, a character pleasant, honest, and brave;
but he never made me the smallest demonstration of friend-
ship, notwithstanding I was indebted to him for my life
in exposing generously his own to save me! There was
every appearance that I saved also the life of this pol-
troon by awaking him from his terrific panic, for in less
than two minutes the English army would have passed over
his body. The cowardice of this man has furnished me since
with materials for reflection, and I was very much convinced
that for one brave man who perished in the routs, there were
ten cowards. The greater the danger that flashes upon the
eye of a coward blinds him, and deprives him of reflection,
renders him incapable of reasoning with himself upon
his position. He loses the power of thinking, with the pre-
sence of mind so necessary in great dangers, and seeing
everything troubles, his stupefaction costing him his life as
well as his honour ; in place of which a brave man firmly and
determinedly sees all the peril in which he finds himself
involved, but his coolness makes him remember at the same
time the means of extricating himself out of a bad case, if he
has any resource, and he profits by it.
When I was beyond the reach of this horrible fire of mus-
ketry, I made a stop to breathe and deliberate upon the
course I should take, and the route I should follow. During
the stay that our army made at Inverness, I have been
often in a pleasure party at the mansion of Mr. Grant of
Kothiemurchus, which is in the middle of the mountains,
about six leagues from that city. This worthy man, then
aged about sixty years, of pleasing manners, formed an
affection for me, and often repeated to me assurances of his
12
friendship ; also his eldest son, with whom I had been a com-
rade at school, but who was in the service of King George.
Rothiemurchus, the father, was a partisan of the house of
Stuart ; but from prudence did not declare himself openly ;
neither did his vassals, who remained neuters with their chief
during the whole expedition. His castle is in the most beau-
tiful situation, surpassing imagination, and which answers
poetic descriptions the most romantic ; situated upon the
banks of a most beautiful river, the Spey, which winds in
serpentine curls in the midst of a verdant plain, extend-
ing to about a quarter of a league in breadth to about two
leagues in length. All around this plain one beholds the
mountains, which rise in an amphitheatre, the one above the
other, the summits of some of which are covered with wood,
and others present the most beautiful verdure. It seems as if
nature had wearied itself in forming so beautiful a retreat, in
lavishing with profusion all that one could imagine of the
beauties of the country, which enchanted me above all that I
had ever seen. During two months that our army reposed
at Inverness, on its return from England, I passed as
much as possible of my time in these delicious scenes, which
I quitted always with regret; and I found myself at the
Castle of Rothiemurchus when they came to announce to us
that the Duke of Cumberland had passed the Spey with his
army on the side of Elgin, and that he approached towards
Inverness. I departed at once to rejoin our army, but with
a sensible regret at quitting these beautiful scenes, and the
society of Rothiemurchus, the most amiable man in the
world mild, polite, upright, of an equable character, natur-
ally jovial, of much spirit, with a great fund of good sense
and judgment. On bidding him adieu, he clasped me in his
arms, embraced me tenderly with tears in his eyes, saying to
me, " My dear boy, if your affairs should take a bad turn,
opposed to the English army, as that may possibly happen,
come my way to conceal yourself at my dwelling, and I will
13
be answerable for your safety, life for life." The Highland
hills being in effect a sure asylum against all the searches
which the English troops could make, I decided without hesi-
tation to take the road to Rothiemurchus, which was on our
right from the field of battle ; but I had not made a hundred
paces when I perceived a corps of the enemy's cavalry before
me, which blocked up the road. I then retraced my way,
taking that which led to Inverness, which I followed just
until I saw an eminence on which the bulk of our army had
thrown itself on that side, and I judged consequently that
the principal pursuit of the enemy would be on the road to
Inverness. I quitted likewise the road, and crossed straight
through the fields without any other design than that of dis-
tancing myself from the enemy as much as I possibly could.
Having arrived on the border of the river Ness, a
quarter of a league higher than the town of Inverness, and
about as far from the field of battle, I stopped to deliberate
upon the route which I ought to take, the cavalry of the
enemy upon the road to Rothiemurchus having totally dis-
concerted me, my mind agitated and tormented to know
where to go in an unknown place, having never been in that
part of the mountains, or west of Inverness. I heard all at
once a very brisk firing at the town, which lasted for some
minutes. As one is inclined in misfortunes to fill the imagin-
ation with vain hopes, I thought at first that it was the
Highlanders that were defending the city against the English,
and I regretted exceedingly having quitted the road to Inver-
ness. I was descending a footpath which led to the town by
the side of the river, where I had passed many times in going
to fish ; having found it, I plunged into it, without giving
myself time for reflection that it was by no means susceptible
of defence, not being surrounded but by a wall, proper only
for any enclosure, and I proceeded forward along this foot-
path in order to bring myself with despatch to Inverness;
but I had not gone a hundred paces down when I en-
14
countered a Highlander coming from the town, who assured
me that the English had entered it without any resistance.
He told me, at the same time, that all the road from the field
of battle to Inverness was strewed with the dead, the English
cavalry having made the principal pursuit from that quarter,
and the streets of the town were equally covered with dead
bodies the bridge at the end of the chief street having been
all at once blocked up by the precipitation of the fugitives.
I was not displeased to find that my first conjectures were
not unfortunately too just, since following the road from the
town I should have made myself among the number of the
carcases. I then retraced my steps with a heart more poig-
nant than ever, and plunged in the deepest sorrow. All my
hopes vanished. I did not dream further than to be at a dis-
tance from these dismal scenes. The Highlander having told
me that he was going to Fort- Augustus, a fortress about
eight leagues from Inverness, which our army had de-
molished some time before, I took again the great road under
his conduct, proposing that we should go together. We
arrived at midnight at Fort- Augustus, without having seen a
single cottage on our way ; and I set my food on the ground
in a small hut which had the name of a public-house, the
hostess of which had no other thing to give me but a morsel
of bread, a cup of elixir vitce,, from grain, and a little hay
for my horse, which gave me the most pleasure j for although
I had taken nothing for twenty-four hours, the terrible
vicissitudes throughout a journey the most cruel and dismal I
had ever experienced, sufficed completely to deprive me of
appetite and all inclination to eat. Being too much overcome,
and equally fatigued in body and mind, I reposed during two
or three hours upon a bench before the fire, for as to beds,
there were none there.
I did not cease in the meantime to look upon Rothiemur-
chus as my only resource for saving me ; but his castle being
situated to the south of Inverness, by the road which I had
15
taken to the west, I found myself much more distant from his
castle at Fort Augustus than from the field of battle. I left
the public-house before it was day, having found another High-
lander, who conducted me to Garviemore, twelve miles south
of Fort Augustus. Next day I found myself at Ruthven, in
Badenoch, which is about two leagues from Rothiemurchus.
Till then, I had not again met with anybody who could give
me any news ; but I was agreeably surprised at finding that
this little market town was in fact, by mere haphazard, the
place of rendezvous, where a great party of our army was
rallied ; for they had not pointed out any place for our rally-
ing in case of defeat. In an instant I saw myself surrounded
by a great many of my comrades, who pressed forward to
announce to me that at Ruthven and its neighbourhood there
was a great part of our army, that the Highlanders were in
the best of dispositions for taking their revenge, and that they
were waiting with impatience the return of an aide-de-camp
which my Lord George had sent to the Prince to receive his
orders, and to be led again to battle. I had never known joy
so vivid as that which I then felt the tears came to my eyes.
I could not better compare my state than to that of an invalid,
who, after having languished a long time, finds himself all at
once in perfect health by a sudden revolution. Having ob-
served that there was not accommodation at Ruthven the
greater part of our army having been obliged to lie on the
field I did not dismount from horseback ; and after having
made enquiries after Finlay Cameron to offer him the assur-
ances of my gratitude, without being able to learn anything
of his fate, I continued my route to go to Killihuntly, which
is about a quarter of a league from Ruthven.
When our army went to the north of Scotland, I stopped
at the house of Mr. Gordon of Killihuntly, where I passed
several days very agreeably. It was full of genteel people.
These amiable persons welcomed my return with all the
friendship possible, and I found my Lord and my Lady Ogil-
16
vie at their house, with many other friends. Not having
partaken of anything for forty hours, save a morsel of old
bread and a cup of usquebagh (water distilled from barley), I
did great honour to the good cheer which my Lady Killi-
huntly set before us ; and as I had not enjoyed a bed since
our departure from Inverness to go to face the enemy, as soon
as the supper was finished T went to bed, with my mind much
refreshed and tranquil, and slept eighteen hours in one slum-
ber. The next day after dinner I went to Ruthven ; but
the aide-de-camp not having again returned, there was no
news whatever; and I returned to sleep at Killihuntly. I
was charmed to see there the gaiety of the Highlanders, who
appeared to be returned more from a ball than from a defeat.
Having passed the night with impatience and restlessness,
I got up betimes, and proceeded with despatch to Ruthven, to
learn if the aide-de-camp had returned. I was astonished to
find misery and melancholy painted on the countenances of
all those whom I met, and I soon learned that the cause of
this was but too well accounted for. The first officer whom
I met told me that the aide-de-camp had returned, and that he
had reported for all the answer on the part of Prince Edward
that every one could adopt the means of saving himself as he
best could a reply melancholy and disheartening for the
brave people who had sacrificed themselves for him.
I returned at once to Killihuntly with a heart rent and
overwhelmed with misery, in order to take leave, and render
thanks to my Lord and my Lady Killihuntly for their civili-
ties. My Lady offered me an asylum in their mountains,
which are very isolated and difficult of access, telling me that
she would construct a cabin in the interior the most concealed,
where she would lay in for me a magazine of provisions of
every kind ; that she would not leave me without money ; and
that she would give me a flock to keep of six or eight sheep.
She added that the fastness which she proposed for me being
on the border of a lake about a quarter of a league from the
17
Castle, where a stream entered it abounding with trout, I
could amuse myself in fishing, and that she would often walk
towards that quarter to see her shepherd. The project at first
pleased me greatly, my misfortunes having metamorphosed
me suddenly into a philosopher, and I would have consented
to pass all my life in this solitude, provided I could have
regained my mind into its natural and tranquil state, and
devoid of agitation. Besides, we were at the approach of
summer, and the natural beauties of the place, the cascades,
the sheets of water, the valleys between the mountains, the
rivers, the lakes, and the woods ; nature there displayed a
magnificence, a majesty that commanded veneration, a thou-
sand savage charms that surpassed infinitely artificial beauties ;
it is there that a painter, a poet would feel their imagination
lifting them up, warming them, and filling them with ideas
which become ineffaceable in the memory of men ; above
all, the amiable society of M. and Madlle. Killihuntly, who had
testified to me so much friendship, in this moment I did not
see any better to do ; but before my deciding on it I wished
to revisit my good friend, Rothiemurchus, to consult with
him if there was no means of finding an opportunity of em-
barking me for foreign parts, in order that I might not be
continually between life and death. I went, after mid-day,
to Rothiemurchus, which is at the other extremity of this
beautiful valley, about two leagues from Killihuntly ; but
Lothiemurchus, the father, was not at home, having gone to
iverness immediately on receiving the news of our defeat,
to make his court to the Duke of Cumberland, more for fear
)f the evil that this barbarous Duke could do him, than for
ly attachment to the House of Hanover. I found his son,
Iso the Chevalier Gordon of Park, Lieutenant-Colonel Lord
iwis Gordon, Gordon of Cobairdie, his brother, and Gordon
)f Abachie.
Rothiemurchus's son advised me to deliver myself up a
prisoner to the Duke of Cumberland, in the view of the diffi-
B
18
culty, almost impossibility of my being able to escape, alleg-
ing, at the same time, that the first who surrendered them-
selves prisoners would not fail to obtain their pardon ; and
he added that he would return immediately to Inverness,
where he had escorted my Lord Balmerino, who had followed
his advice in delivering himself up a prisoner. I did not
relish at all the perfidious counsels of my old comrade, who
was of a character quite different from that of his father. I
replied to him that the very thought of seeing myself in a
dungeon in irons made me tremble. As long as I could I
would preserve my liberty, and when I was no longer able to
avoid falling into the hands of the Duke of Cumberland, he
could then make of me all that he could wish. I would then
be resigned to all. The unfortunate Lord Balmerino had his
head cut off at London during the time that I was concealed
there, and he died with an astonishing constancy and bravery,
worthy of the ancient Romans. The servant of Rothiemurchus
told us that having gone through the field of battle, there
would appear to have been more killed of the English than
the Highlanders, which gave us some consolation in learning
that they had not gained the victory at small cost. He added
that the Duke of Cumberland after having left our wounded
on the field of battle for forty hours quite naked, had sent
detachments to kill all those w^hose robust constitutions had
been able to stand against a continual outpour of pelting rain,
and that these orders had been executed with the utmost
rigour, without sparing any one.*
M. Chevalier Gordon, his brother, and Abachie having
made up their minds to go to their own estates, in the county
of Banff, about ten or twelve leagues to the south of Rothie-
murchus, they proposed to me to go with them. I consented
at the instant, the more willingly that my brother-in-law,
* The Duke of Cumberland was obliged to have an Act of Parliament to
indemnify him for the cruelties which he had committed in Scotland, con-
trary to the laws of the realm, and to shelter him from prosecutions.
19
Rollo, now Lord Rollo, Peer of Scotland, was established in
the town of Banff, capital of that province, and being a sea-
port, where he had the inspection of merchant vessels, by an
appointment which he had obtained lately from Government,
I hoped, by his means, to find an opportunity to pass beyond
sea. So I abandoned without difficulty the project of shep-
herd of my Lady Killihuntly, which had held me too long
time in a state of uncertainty of my fate ; besides, being a
stranger in the mountainous districts, without knowing a
single word of their language, determined me entirely to put
myself under the auspices of M. Chevalier Gordon.
After a stay of two or three days at Rothiemurchus, I
departed with the Chevalier Gordon, his brother, Gordon of
Cobairdie, and Gordon of Abachie, and we slept at some
miles from the house of one of their friends, near a mountain
called Cairngorm, where the shepherds often find precious
stones of different kinds without knowing their value. I
made, during some years, a collection of these stones, before
being at the place which produces them, and I have found
them very beautiful ; above all a ruby, of great beauty,
which piece did not cost me more than a crown, and when it
was polished, I refused to give it to the Duke of Hamilton
for fifty guineas. This stone had the thickness of a bean or
berry ; the colour somewhat dark ; brilliancy like the most
beautiful diamond ; and all the jewellers of Edinburgh had
taken it for an oriental ruby. I made a present of it to my
Lady Jean Douglas, who repaid me amply, some time after,
by saving my life. I had also found a hyacinth of a very
beautiful brilliancy, and a topaz as thick as a pigeon's egg,
and of a fine colour, upon which I engraved the arms of
Great Britain ; and I made a present of them both to Prince
Edward ; the hyacinth at Perth, on attaching my fortune to
his ; and the topaz, with his arms, on our arrival at Edin-
burgh. These gentlemen having agreed, at the entreaties of
their friend, to adjourn the next day to his house, I accom-
20
panied him with great good will, and forgetting for the
moment my disasters. I rose the next day, in the morning,
at an early hour, running immediately to those hills among
the shepherds, where I found some beautiful topazes, two of
which I made a present of to the Duke of York, at Paris,
sufficiently grand to serve his seal. On my return to dinner,
seeing me enter the Lodge with a great sack of pebbles, they
all burst out in a great roar of laughter ; and the Chevalier
Gordon exhorted me very severely to think rather of saving
myself from the power of the police, than to collect pebbles.
I had my mind occupied as much as they with our un-
fortunate lot, and the scaffold sufficiently vividly impressed
upon my imagination, but I was satisfied at the same time,
that the possession of a few pebbles would not accelerate my
fate if it was my destiny to be hanged ; and the search of
these stones dissipated for a moment the ideas which absorbed
my companions in misfortune.
We arrived in the county of Banff the fourth day of our
departure from Rothiemurchus, where it became necessary
for us to separate the populace being all Calvinists, and
violent against the House of Stuart. Having lodged the next
night at the house of Mr. Stuart, the Presbyterian minister,
but a very good man, and secretly in the interest of Prince
Edward, on rising in the morning I exchanged my clothes
of the Highland garb with his servant for an old peasant
dress, all in rags, offensive to the smell, and in appearance as
if it had not been in use for many years, nor since it had
cleaned his master's stables ; for it had the smell of dung
to be felt at a distance. I made a complete exchange
with him even to stockings and shoes, in every one of which,
however, he found his account, and I much more than he
with these tatters, which were calculated to assist in saving
my life. Thus metamorphosed we took leave of one another,
every one separating and taking a different route. M. the
Chevalier Gordon advised me to go and sleep in his house at
21
Park. I followed his advice the more willingly that his
house, not being but a league and a half from Banff, I was
approaching towards having an interview with my brother-in-
law Rollo, but not without dread that some of the detachments
they had in that quarter might be sent to search for and ap-
prehend the Chevalier Gordon, who was a near relative of the
Duke of Gordon, and might be able to make me prisoner at
his place. I found Mrs. Menzies, his cousin-german, in his
house, a most amiable lady, full of spirit and good sense ;
and I had passed some time very agreeably in her company
in the house of Mr. Duff, Provost of Banff, a house the most
respectable and the most amiable that I have ever known in
my life ; and quitted their charming society with the greatest
regret possible to rejoin our army at Inverness. Madame
told me that there were in the town of Banff four hundred
men of the English troops ; and she exhorted me strongly not
to expose myself by going there. But as an interview with
my brother-in-law was my only hope of being able to save
myself in a distant land, I determined to go contrary to
her advice, and I departed the next day on foot from the
house of the Chevalier Gordon, towards nine o'clock at night,
leaving my horse there till my return. I met, on entering
the town, many English soldiers, who took not the least
notice of me, which gave me the most favourable augury of
my peasant's disguise, for my clothes were so bad the poorest
beggar would have blushed to have carried them on his back.
Then my blood boiled in my veins at the sight of these sol-
diers, whom I regarded as the authors of the pains and
misery, which I began to feel ; and I was not able to allow
myself to fix my eyes upon them but with rage and my soul
full of fury. I continued my way, praying fervently to the
Supreme Being to grant us once more only one single oppor-
tunity of avenging ourselves of their cruelties at Culloden, and
that I would thus die tranquil and satisfied, prayers which
in appearance were never granted.
22
I went straight to the house of Mr. Duff, where I had
been so agreeable so little time before. He was secretly a
partisan of the Prince, but prudent and discreet, he did not
declare his way of thinking but to his friends. He was the
most amiable man in the world, endowed with all the good
qualities possible, and of real merit. He has the most equable
character, pleasant, gay, enjoying great good sense, judgment,
spirit, and discernment. Mrs. Duff, his spouse, resembled in
every respect the character of her husband ; and their two
daughters, of whom the youngest sister was a dazzling beauty,
were exact copies of their father and mother. Everybody in
the house of Mr. Duff had but one way of thinking, and it
was the most delicious society, that I regretted leaving as
long as I lived. The maid-servant who opened the door for
me, did not recognize me on account of the oddity of my dis-
guise. I told her that I was charged with a letter for her
master, to be delivered into his own hands ; and I begged her
to inform him of it. Mr. Duff descended, and at first did
not recognize me more than his maid-servant ; but having
fixed his eyes upon me for a moment, a torrent of tears suc-
ceeded his surprise. He exhorted his servant strongly to be
faithful in guarding the secret. Mrs. Duff and their daugh-
ters being gone to bed, he conducted me into a chamber, and
sent, upon the instant, his servant to find out my brother-in-
law, who had not returned to his house ; and all the inquiries
that could be made to find him were fruitless. My sister was
still at the house of her father-in-law, Lord Rollo, at Dun-
craib, as it was not long that he had held his charge at
Banff. My intention not being to sleep there if I should be
able to fiud my brother-in-law immediately, and ascertain if
I could hope for his services in a moment so critical for me,
the neighbourhood of soldiers having too greatly disturbed
me to be able to be tranquil, without fear at every instant
of being discovered, I had resolved to leave Banff before day
to return to the Castle of the Chevalier Gordon. Mr. Duff
23
returned at one o'clock in the morning, and I then went to
bed, without being able to shut my eyes.
I arose as soon as the day began to appear, and resumed
the taterdemalions. Seated in an arm-chair, with my eyes
fixed on the fire, in a deep reverie, and plunged in an abyss of
reflections which my situation furnished me with in abund-
ance, suddenly the maid-servant entered, and rushed by
into my apartment, announcing to me that I was lost, and
that the court-yard of the house was full of soldiers to
seize me. Less than that sufficed to rouse me from my ab-
stractions. I looked up at the window, and saw actually
the soldiers in the court-yard, as the servant had told me.
Thus convinced ocularly of my misfortune, I returned to the
arm-chair full of resignation, regarding myself as a man who
should shortly end his days. I conjectured immediately that
it was the servant who had betrayed me, having some soldier
for a lover, as is generally the case. There remained but a
feeble spark of hope of my being able to make my way
through the soldiers, with one of my pistols in each hand ;
and I kept my eyes always fixed upon the door of the cham-
ber, in order to rush upon the soldiers as a lion the moment I
saw them appear. Miserable resource ! in which I had but
little confidence to rely on ; but this was the last resort.
Having passed about a quarter of an hour in these violent
agitations, at last the door of my chamber flew open, and I
rushed with precipitation to attack them. But what a sur-
prise ! In place of the soldiers I espied the beautiful and
adorable Miss Duff, the younger sister, out of breath, who
came as a guardian angel to inform me not to be any longer
disturbed; that it was nothing more than the soldiers who
were fighting among themselves ; that they had entered the
court to conceal themselves from their officers ; and that their
quarrel having exploded itself in a few fisticuffs, they had
left the court-yard together. She was of rare beauty, and was
not more than eighteen years of age. I seized her in my
24
arms, pressed her to my bosom, and gave her a thousand
tender embraces from the bottom of my heart. In an instant
the whole house was assembled in my chamber, to congratu-
late me upon my deliverance the noise of the soldiers having
made every one rise, and it was scarcely six o'clock in the
morning. Convinced of the sincere friendship and esteem of
all this amiable family, one of my great solicitudes during this
adventure was, that through their too great anxiety for me
some one of them might be apt to betray me innocently, had
it not been for Mr. Duff, by whom I was reassured from his
coolness and presence of mind.
My brother-in-law came to see me the moment after this
alarm. He made me all the protestations possible of friend-
ship, at the same time that he excused himself for not being
able to contribute by any means to afford me an opportunity
of embarking for a foreign land ; all the vessels at Banff
being strictly inspected before their departure by the different
officers of Government ; and he advised me very strongly to
retire into the mountainous districts as the only course to
adopt. I confess that I was indignant at him, the more so
that he was under obligations to me without number. I an-
swered him that I had no need of his counsels, but his services.
He took himself off, after having staid a quarter of an hour
with me as upon nettles, and I have never seen him since, or
had any accounts of him. He knew all the captains of mer-
chant vessels at Banff ; so that if he had been willing to serve
me, he could have certainly found some one of the number
who could have taken me into his vessel disguised as a sailor,
which would have saved me from an infinitude of pains, and
sufferings the most cruel, which I endured before being saved ;
but he did not wish to expose himself to the least risk for his
brother-in-law, who on all occasions ever gave him the most
substantial proofs of his friendship ; and he was of a character
that would not put himself to any inconvenience, not even for
his own father, or all those who existed on earth ; regarding
25
himself born for himself, without bowels of compassion for
his species in their misfortunes and sufferings. Misfortunes
are the touchstone to prove men ; and I have learned by mine
how little one can count upon friendship in general.* All
those from whom I expected assistance in my misfortunes
threw off the mask, and discovered to me their falsehood and
dissimulation ; and it was only those from whom I did not
expect any service that turned out true friends. Experience
made me know in one day many, in place of having been
deceived all my life. I had even rendered most essential
service to my brother-in-law a little time before.f Lord
Hollo, his father, a violent partisan of the House of Stuart,
had taken up arms in 1715, in an attempt which was
then made to re-establish that House upon the throne ; but
they were put to the rout by the English army, under the
command of the Duke of Argyle ; and his Lordship, after
having remained concealed for some years, obtained his par-
don. After having passed a night at his Lordship's house
when our army made its retreat from Stirling to go to Inver-
ness, he pleaded incessantly that his age and his infirmities
did not permit him to join Prince Edward ; and he conjured
me with clasped hands to proceed to Banff express, to order
his son, my brother-in-law, immediately to join himself to our
army, under the pain of never seeing him in his lifetime. I
communicated to my brother-in-law the orders of his father ;
but I made him aware at the same time of the misery to which
he would expose his wife and family in case we should be de-
feated. My counsels were salutary to him ; since a short
* "In the midst of disgraces the most frightful," says M. Bedoyere, "I
derived a sweet satisfaction to know men and all their perfidiousness they
were no longer concealed from my eyes I saw them such as they are in
effect advantages reserved to the unfortunate, whose reason, divested of
prejudices, is the lot and the consolation."
t It appears lately proved by the archives in the Tower of London, that
my nephew, at present Lord Hollo, a peer of Scotland, is descended from
Raoul or Eollon, Duke of Normandy, by lawful wedlock.
26
time after he found himself in possession of the lands and
titles of the House of Rollo, instead of dying upon the scaf-
fold, or being a mendicant in a foreign land. It is true, I
had the interest of my nephew and sister more in view than
his.
Having passed the whole day at the house of Mr. Duff,
with as much agreeableness as it was possible to retain
in the troublesome position in which I found myself placed, I
took a last adieu of that charming society about nine o'clock
at night, in order to return to the Chateau of the Chevalier
Gordon, and our tears were reciprocal and abundant. I
passed the night without going to bed, in order to converse
with Mrs. Menzies, not without fear of a visit from some
detachment sent in pursuit of the Chevalier Gordon, and the
mistake would not have been to my advantage. After a,
great many reasonings with this lady upon the part which I
ought to take, I at length finally decided to gain the low
country, to endeavour, as much as I possibly could, to
approach Edinburgh, to obtain succours from my parents
and my friends, not knowing any person in the Highlands
but those who were placed in the same embarrassment as
myself, or to perish in the attempt; to regard myself from
henceforward as a lost man, who had a thousand chances to
one to perish upon the scaffold, but who might have one
chance in my favour ; to resign myself entirely to Providence,
and to commit myself to mere hazard, than to any other
resource ; to preserve, always, my sans froid and presence of
mind, as absolutely necessary to grapple with the troubles
and encounters which I might have to meet with, and to
profit by the favourable opportunities that might present
themselves. Behold what were my resolute and decided
conclusions to put them into execution, and to think of noth-
ing that could in any way divert me from this plan. Mrs.
Menzies did her utmost possible to turn me from it, by repre-
senting to me the insurmountable difficulties at every step ;
27
the counties to traverse, where the fanatical Calvinistic
peasants assembled in troops, of those even to form patrols,
with their pastors at their heads, in order to make prisoners
of the unfortunate gentlemen who endeavoured to save them-
selves in the mountainous districts of the country from the
pursuit of the troops ; the great distance it was from Edin-
burgh, and the impossibility of being able to cross the two
arms of the sea (see the Plan, Vol. /., page SJ, without a
passport from Government, where the English cavalry made
their continual patrols along the banks and in the villages, to
examine and arrest all whom they suspected without a pass-
port. But nothing could turn me from my resolutions to
advance towards the south.
I took leave of Madame Menzies at five o'clock in the
morning ; she gave me a letter of recommendation to Mr.
Gordon, of Kildrummy, one of her relations, whose house,
which he then inhabited, was at the distance of twelve miles
from that of Mr. Gordon, of Park ; and she gave me a
domestic to conduct me thither, whom I sent back immediately
when we were in sight of his house. I asked at a servant of
Mr. Gordon's if his master was at home ? He answered me
that he was gone out, but would be back to dinner ; and he
informed me, with a tone of indifference, that if I was cold I
could enter the kitchen to warm myself, while waiting for
his master's return. I accepted the offer, for he made it very
frankly, and I entered the kitchen, where a great number of
servants assembled around the fire, who believing themselves
of a class much above me, left me for a long time at a side,
before proposing to me to sit down, or to permit me to join
their company, which I approached very respectfully. They
embarrassed me much by their continual questioning ; one
lackey demanded of me if it was a long time since I had been
in the service of Madame Menzies I I replied with a humble
and submissive air that it was not above two months. I
heard, at the same time, a chambermaid, who whispered in
28
the ear -of a lackey, but loud enough that I could hear her,
that Madame Menzies ought to have been ashamed to have
sent a domestic with her commission for his master so ill
clad. Their jargon, tomfooleries, and impertinences annoyed
me to death, and made me impatient during two hours, when,
for my deliverance, Mr. Gordon arrived. I delivered to him
the letter of Madame Menzies in presence of his servants,
following him constantly, even to his apartment, and immedia-
tely when I saw myself alone with him I told him who I was,
and beseeched him to give me a guide to conduct me as far
as the first arm of the sea, not being acquainted with the
country. He seemed penetrated with my situation, and
showed all possible civilities ; and sent, upon the instant, a
servant with an order to one of his gamekeepers to furnish
me with a guide as far as the estate of Kildrurnmy, which is
six miles from that; and in waiting for the return of his
servant, he found means to cause be brought in to me under
cover a dinner, of which I ate heartily, without feeling an
appetite, but for precaution, not knowing if I should find any
supper at Kildrummy. The guide having arrived, I took
leave of Mr. Gordon, and I arrived at an early hour at Kil-
drummy, a village greatly celebrated for one of the most
memorable episodes in the history of Scotland, where I
stopped to pass the night.
The Scotch had been in alliance with France during
nearly nine hundred years without interruption, since
Charlemagne, till the union of the crowns of Scotland and
England, without having ever varied in their treaties, offen-
sive and defensive, but the Scotch were generally the victims
from their attachment to that kingdom. In all the quarrels
of France with England, the Scotch began hostilities, France
availing itself of the services of Scotland to make a diversion
on the side of England, and to keep the English in check,
a manucevre which France always played, and of which the
Scotch were continually the dupes ; for the moment the
29
English made a descent upon France, the French auxiliaries
in Scotland were recalled immediately for the defence of their
own country, and these unfortunate Scotch were left to their
own forces to free themselves from the mischievous adven-
ture in the best way they could ; and England having always
been much more populous than Scotland, the Scotch were
many times reduced to the lowest abyss, their valour not
being always able to supply the want of numbers. The
Scotch after the loss of many battles on end, having lost all
the Lowlands of Scotland, as far as Kildrummy, were shut up
in the Highlands, the difficult access whereof saved them from
being entirely subdued. In that deplorable condition,
Eobert the Bruce, having re-assembled six thousand men, the
shattered remains of the Scottish armies, placed himself at
their head, and, at Kildrummy, fell unexpectedly with im-
petuous force upon the English army, who were immediately
put to flight, without one escaping to carry the news of their
defeat, and Scotland saw itself entirely liberated.* I walked
about a great deal at Kildrummy, recalling this trait of history
to my imagination, and filling it therewith so totally that I
believe I could distinguish even the field of battle where this
brilliant victory had been gained over the English. I said to
myself, " Ah ! if this earth could open itself, how would it
discover there the bones of the English which it had preser-
ved in its bosom as precious deposits." In fine, the sight of
this celebrated place solaced me, elevated my heart a little,
and made me feel for the moment my pains assuaged and sus-
pended, and my torments of mind abated.
As there were but few inns at Kildrummy, I passed the
night in what bore the name of the "Public House," where
I reposed myself upon a bed of straw, much to my discom-
fort with an enormous number of fleas ; but in recompense
my landlady gave me for supper an excellent young fowl,
*It is reported that the English army then in Scotland amounted to ten
lousand men, but it is more likely that the number is exaggerated.
30
and she surprised me next morning in demanding from me
but three halfpence, (six halfpence of France), for my supper
and bed. It is true this was a hotel very extraordinaiy,
where they had no need of any hard cash. This event gave
me pleasure, seeing, at least, I should not have hunger and
misery to combat with as I had had in the Highlands. M.
Gordon had sent an order to Kildrummy to furnish me with
a guide as far north as Cortachy, a village belonging to
Lord Ogilvie, at the foot of the mountains, which I had
walked along the sides of since my departure from Banff.
Before my departure from Kildrummy, I made them roast
another fowl, which I put into my pocket by way of precau-
tion, uncertain if I should find anything to eat in my jour-
ney ; and in giving mine hostess a piece of twelve halfpence,
she was as content as I was. These good people know little
about money, and in effect they have no need of it, having in
abundance the necessaries of life.
As soon as my guide had put me into the way to Cor-
tachy, without the possibility of deceiving me, I sent him
back, and I arrived at Cortachy in the evening. I wished,
with all my heart, in crossing the country of Glen Lyon to
meet there the minister of that parish, a sanguinary villain,
who made daily patrols through that country with a pistol
concealed under his coat, which he presented at the head of
our unfortunate gentlemen to make them prisoners. This
iniquitous minister of the Word of God, regarded as a saint,
attempted to make every one perish on the scaffold.* Mr.
Menzies had forewarned me to be upon my guard against
him, but I did not fear him, having always my English pistols
* I have seen, says the author of Giphantie, people who adore the same
God, who sacrifice at the same altar, who preach to the people the spirit of
peace and sweetness ; I have seen them engage in questions the most unin-
telligible, and immediately hate them, persecute them, and mutually destroy
one another. God ! what will become of men if they don't find in Thee
more goodness than is found in those of weakness and of folly ? Cease
to be victims of misguided zeal, adore God, keep silence, and live in peace.
31
in a most perfect state, loaded and primed, one in each
breeches' pocket. I desired, on the contrary, to find him, for
the benefit of my comrades in misfortune, being well assured
that I would not have had any difficulty to fight with him at
pistols, for a man harsh, barbarous, and cruel is never brave ;
I have remarked this all my life ; but tlie punishment of this
monster in human form was reserved for Mr. Gordon of
Abachie. When we were separated four days, after our de-
parture from Rothiemurchus, Abachie took the post to go to
his Castle ; and the minister of Glen Lyon having had infor-
mation of this, placed himself at the head of a detachment of
his armed parishioners, true disciples of such a pastor, whom
he conducted to the Castle of Abachie, to make him prisoner ;
and he had only time to save himself through the window, in
his shirt. As one hardly ever pardons an attempt made upon
one's life by treachery, Mr. Gordon assembled a dozen of
his vassals, some days after departed with them in the
night for Glen Lyon, and found means to enter into the
house of the fanatical minister, having gone up into the
chamber where he slept. They subjected him to an oper-
ation too horrible to relate, which may be conceived but can-
not be described, assuring him at the same time that if he did
not make these infernal patrols of his parishioners to cease,
they would cause a second visit cost him his life. None
could in the smallest degree lament this adventure but one ;
as to himself, his chastisement was not so tragical as death
upon the scaffold, which he wished to prepare for Mr. Gordon
of Abachie. It is believed that he was sufficiently corrected
not to follow any more his inhuman courses.*
*The Editor has endeavoured to put the misdeeds of this miscreant into
verse in the following lines, which he hopes his readers will appreciate, how-
ever feeble the execution. The disgraceful conduct of a Minister of the
Church of Scotland prostituting his sacred office to the purposes of politi-
cal rapine and revenge, can never be sufficiently reprobated, nor too severely
punished. Happy it is that there are but few examples of such violence and
wickedness, and none in the present day,
32
As the greater part of the vassals of my Lord Ogilvie
were with him in the army of Prince Edward, I risked no-
6% | arson of <fc f germ
How shall the Muse relate the tale,
Might make the stoutest heart to quail ?
It is not of arms or murder dire,
Or sacked towns where hosts expire ;
But one which covers us with shame
A deed so dar^ we dare not name.
A fiend in human flesh, they say
Might well lament the fatal day ;
But some say he uttered neither tear nor groan,
Nor made his tongue to guilt atone ;
But others tell a different tale,
And say he spoke of heaven and hell.
Not fit for poinard, sword, or rack,
Rampant he rode through moors and mire,
Without one touch of manly fire.
Nor he alone ; a bloody train
Of parish folks fanatic men,
Whose souls he trained to deeds of strife,
Instead of leading them in walks of life ;
A sad perversion of his honoured place,
Omen evil to the rising race.
And what dire design but death,
Could bring him armed upon the heath
With numerous crowds of followers in his train,
To catch those called rebellious men.
Among those whose rank was high
Stood Gordon, chivalrous Chief of Abachie.
The monster parson of the glen
Surrounds his house with Highland men,
To catch him as in peace he lay,
To take him prisoner, or to slay
Within his castle gates of Cortachy.
So sudden was the onslaught dire,
It seemed like gleams of liquid fire ;
Its success, had they done the deed,
Must have cost the Chief his head,
And made another to be told
Had stained with blood the scaffold.
As it was, he just had time
To save his neck or break his spine.
33
thing in addressing myself to the first house I should come to at
Cortachy, having informed the landlady on entering the cot-
tage that I was one of the Prince's army.* She told me im-
mediately that there were two gentlemen concealed in Glen
Prosene, a great ravine between two hills, where there runs a
small rivulet, which was at the foot of the mountains, a
pass altogether picturesque and greatly secluded. I took my
way immediately, following her directions to the house of a
peasant named Samuel, quite at the top of the ravine, about
half a league from Cortachy, where I found them as she had
told me. They were Messrs. Brown and Gordon, the two
officers in the service of France who had escaped from the
*The vassals in Scotland always followed the side which their chief took,
whether it were for the House of Stuart or for that of Hanover.
No sooner was the alarm but given,
Than he from off his bed had risen ;
Then almost naked to the road,
Where beasts of burden only trode,
Out at the window took his flight,
To meet the darkness of the night,
Without his stockings or his shoes,
Or time his vassals to arouse.
There's not a man whose heart can feel
For public or for private weal,
But must detest all treacherous arts,
However well the traitors act their parts ;
And wonder not if vengeance due
The guilty traitor should pursue.
So in this case, as will be seen,
'Twas neither low nor could be mean,
To make the monster dearly rue,
With retribution justly due,
The dastardly attempt he made
To endanger Gordon's precious head.
Not many more than ten good days,
Or nights that sparkled in the moon's pale rays,
Than he whose life had been thus ensnared
By traitors vile, who thus had dared,
With vassals few, but manly stride
Along the mountainous passes, ride
C
34
city of Carlisle in England after its capitulation, who were
very glad to see me again. They advised me strongly not to
go farther to the south, where I would inevitably expose my-
self to be captured, because they knew positively that all the
towns and villages upon the coast of the chief arm of the sea
were visited at every instant with all the vigilance and exact-
ness possible, by patrols of cavalry, who rode continually
along the coast, and who examined with the greatest rigour
and severity all passengers. They added that it was their
design, of trying to go to Edinburgh ; but from this they
desisted, seeing the impossibility of reaching it, and they
named to me many of our comrades who had been made
prisoners within a few days by endeavouring to effect a pas-
sage at the chief arm of the sea, which is about eight miles
To the Parson's manse, surround the door
With dagger, dirk, and bright claymore,
Determined to avenge the traitor's deed,
That had imperill'd this Gordon's head.
Aloft into the bedroom floor
They mount, and shut the creaking door ;
And such a scene we shall not tell,
As there the sanguinary man befell ;
Blood enough he got full sore,
That made him wince, and howl, and roar.
It needs not words his fate to tell,
Nor what the loss he must bewail.
The tender virgins heard his cry,
His wife bemoaned with many a sigh.
The men they stript him to the skin,
And saw his legs were very thin ;
He cried for mercy at their hands,
They said " Dismiss your bloody bands ;
For if we come again to use the knife,
Depend it then shall cost your life."
It is not oft such deeds are heard,
Nor have been known since days of Abelard.
The moral of this tale is such
That zeal should ne'er be over much ;
Nor short-lived man betray his friend,
But always helpless innocence defend.
35
from Cortachy ; they beseeched me with these instances in
view not to be obstinate, and to adopt, as they had done, the
sojourn of Glen Prosene, at the house of Samuel. With
every desire that I had to approach Edinburgh, I did not
wish to precipitate myself to perdition by rashness, my situa-
tion being then so critical that the least false step from an
error of judgment was sure to cost me my life. Thus I fol-
lowed their advice, and consented without wavering to
remain with them at the house of Samuel.
Samuel was a very honest man, but excessively poor.
We dwelt at his house during seven days, and partook of
the same cheer with him and his family, who had nothing for
their entire nourishment but oatmeal, and no other beverage
but the pure water of the river which runs in the middle of
the ravine. We breakfasted in the morning with a morsel of
oat bread, and not to choke ourselves, we drank a cup of
water, which made it pass over. For dinner we caused
boil this meal with water till it became thick, and we ate
this with horn spoons ; at night we turned the boiling water
upon this mess into an earthen pan, and this was our sup-
per. I confess that the time I passed under this nourishment
appeared long, although we all held out well, without our
health being in the least degree affected. We could have
had an addition to our bad cheer by sending to bring it from
Cortachy ; but we durst not risk that for fear that the inha-
bitants who knew the ordinary fare of Samuel would not
doubt but that he had people concealed in his house ; and that
some evil intended person would not fail to inform the first
detachment of cavalry, whom they might find at Cortachy,
some of whom were there very often, to come to make us
prisoners. Poor Samuel and his family, never having
known any other meat during the whole year, unless, perhaps,
in summer, that they might have a little milk to mix with
their oatmeal in place of water, by their mode of living they
were under the shelter of fortune, not fearing diseases which.
36
might deprive them of their meagre fare, but to which they
might be less subject by that frugal and simple nourishment,
which would not produce so much humour in the body as in
those who lived in luxury ; and as they confined the neces-
saries of life to a very small limit, they were certain to find
what was sufficient wherewithal to furnish their subsistence
and support by their labour ; besides, they enjoyed a health
perfect and unknown to people brought up in abundance and
ease.* Their desires were confined to the preservation of
their existence and their well-being, without ambition to de-
part from the state where nature had placed them, not even
to ameliorate their lot ; content with what they possessed,
they wished nothing more ; living without care, sleeping with-
out inquietude, and dying without fear.j One should call
*It is in the nature of man to seek out the means of his happiness, that
he should be as happy as it is possible for him to be subsistence for the
present, and if he will think it, for the future, hope and certainty of this
first boon. It is not necessary but to believe that we are happy to be so.
It is this belief that makes part of our felicity. He who believes himself
unfortunate becomes so.
fThe ordinary state of the human mind is a species of delirium. The
soul is unceasingly agitated by a strange succession of vague thoughts and
contrary passions. Man cannot be happy but by retrenching, not only his
actions, but his useless thoughts. Says an author We do not mistake our-
selves, however, by this indolence. The calculations of nature are much
greater than ours, guarding us from slandering her too largely. She leaves
to the cares and passions of men the distribution of riches, but that of
happiness is retained in her own hands. She has no food for variety of
dishes, and delicacy of best meats ; she has not put in common all the
pleasures which she chooses to distribute to the human race ; she has given
too much empire to the potentates of the earth. They can by their concur-
rence reduce man by labour to have nothing for his recompense but pain,
they cannot elevate him ; neither his returning wants which give a sauce to
the most simple nourishment, nor that burning thirst which pants with
pleasure after the fountain, nor the sleep which refreshes sweetly his
wearied frame, nor the spectacle of nature which rejoices him at sunwake,
nor the emotion~which distracts him, nor that curiosity which agitates him,
nor that blood which thrills deliciously through his'senses, nor that hope, in
short, which gilds the future, sweetens the present, and excites courage.
All these pleasures of life are not in the powers of civilized possessors ; it is
the boon of the poor as well as the rich.
37
them happy if happiness consists in exemption from pains
which follow imaginary wants ; and the remembrance of
those good people, of whose felicity I was often envious,
made me always think that three-fourths of men are miser-
able by their own proper faults, having in their power the
means of being happy, if they would choose to regulate their
requirements according to their incomes, every one according
to the means which he possesses. The absolute necessaries
for man are food and raiment ; but what they mean ordinarily
by the necessaries of life does not consist but of superfluous
things, no ways essential to the preservation of their health
and existence on the contrary, often prejudicial, and which
only serve to shorten their days. No one can be happy but
by being contented with his lot, and proportioning his
wants to his resources ; that is what all might be able to do
gradually, even reducing themselves to the condition of
Samuel ; disenthroning ambition and avarice, as flies which
multiply without ceasing our imaginary wants in such sort,
that the more one acquires of honours and riches, the more
is one insatiable and never happy. Happy mediocrity, verily !
It is often in one's own bosom that one finds happiness,
turning by necessity of spirit from cloying pleasures.* Besides
oui' meagre cheer, to which I had at first much pain and
difficulty in accustoming myself, we were often disturbed by
detachments of English cavalry, who made frequent patrols
in our neighbourhood. Samuel had a married daughter who
dwelt at the entry of the ravine, and she served us as an
*Certainly, says Herodotus, there are a great many rich men who, never-
theless, are not happy ; and there are a great many that are happy with but
little patrimony. The rich man has many ways of satisfying his covetous-
ness, and of bearing great losses. But granted that the other, though in-
ferior to him in two things, he surpasses him, nevertheless, in this that he
cannot suffer great losses, or be subject to those covetous desires ; and this
helplessness itself, which seems to be a disgrace of fortune, is for him an
advantage and a favour. He enjoys health, he has virtuous children, he has
a pleasing countenance, he has an elegant deportment.
38
advanced sentinel, to apprize us when there were any detach-
ments of the English at Cortachy, and who tranquilized us
during the day, our sentineless being very exact to inform us
of all that passed there ; but when the troops arrived at the
beginning of the night, we were obliged to seek our security
by saving ourselves in the neighbouring mountains, where we
often passed the night in the open air, even in frightful
storms of rain and wind.
Our sentineless, always attentive and alert, came to in-
form us that there were a great many detachments who
scoured round our quarters, and that they had made prisoners
of Sir James Kinloch, his brothers, and many other persons
who were found with them in his castle, and that M. Ker, a
colonel in the service of Spain, aide-de-camp to Prince
Edward, had also been captured about four miles from us, at
the side of the little town of Forfar. She added that one
detachment had searched through all the castles and environs
of Cortachy in the hope of finding there my Lord Ogilvie,
who was then not far from us without our suspecting it.
According to what his Lordship has said to me since, that
the same detachment had information of our retreat in the
Glen Prosene, on account of these detachments which flew
continually around us, we were all unanimously of opinion to
take our departure from Samuel's house the next day at three
o'clock in the morning to return to the mountains, and fix for
some time our residence among the rocks, having no other
course to take. In consequence of our resolution, we went
to bed at eight o'clock, in order to make at least one provision
of sleep at parting, not being able to hope to have the benefit
of sleeping under roofs for some time.
I have never been credulous in regard to supernatural
stories, which people listen to in all countries, and with which
they delude men from their infancy the products of brains
disordered by superstitions of old women or fools ; but I
had this night a dream so extraordinarily incomprehensible
39
that if any other had told it me I would have treated him
as a visionary ; nevertheless, it was in the end so verified
to the letter, and I owed to it my life in having been so
much struck with it that, all incredulous as I had been, I was
not able to refuse to follow the impressions which it had left
upon me. I dreamed that, escaping from the pursuit of
my enemies, rejoicing with entire satisfaction to see myself
beyond all dangers, and in a situation of the most perfect
security, with the soul serene and tranquil, in short the most
fortunate of men, having escaped perishing on the scaffold,
and being at an end of all my pains and sufferings, I was at
Edinburgh, in company with my Lady Jean Douglas, sister
of the Duke of Douglas, relating to her all that had hap-
pened to me since the battle of Culloden, giving her a detail
of all that regarded our army, since our retreat from Stirling,
and finally the risks which I had run personally for saving
myself, the idea of which, always presented to my mind of
perishing on the scaffold, had pursued me without ceasing till
that happy moment, which turned in my soul the salutary
balm of the sweetest tranquility. On awakening at six
o'clock in the morning this dream left an impression so strong
upon my mind that the sweet voice of my Lady Jean
Douglas appeared to me still sounding in my ears ; all my
senses were in a profound calm, at the same time that I ex-
perienced a serenity of soul and a tranquility of mind which I
had ceased to know since the fatal epoch of our misfortunes.
All the particulars of my dream were presented to my im-
agination, and engraved deeply in my memory ; and my soul
was for a long time in this flattering state, sweet and agree-
able, where my dream had placed it by the thought of being
saved. I rested in my bed distracted and plunged in an
abyss of reflection, my head placed on my hand, and my
elbow leaning on the pillow of my bed, recapitulating all the
circumstances of my dream, regretting that it was but a
dream, but wishing to have often such to calm the storms and
40
agitations by which my soul was devoured by the uncertainty
of my lot. What could be more cruel than to be continually
fluctuating between hope and despair, a thousand times worse
than death itself ; for the certainty of a suffering visibly un-
avoidable makes one adopt his course with resolution and
resignation. Having passed an hour in this attitude, immove-
able as a statue, Samuel entered my chamber. He told me
that my companions had gone at three o'clock in the morning,
and pointed out to me at the same time the road in the moun-
tains where I would find them. He added that he had been
twice at my bed to awaken me before their departure, but
finding me buried in a deep sleep, he had felt regret to
awaken me, knowing the need I had of repose to fortify me
at the commencement against the fatigues which I was about
to undergo in the mountains ; he told me to be quick in rising,
it being time to depart, for fear lest his daughter, believing
that we had all left his house, might not be so exact of adver-
tising, if there appeared any detachments. I answered him in
a soft and serious tone " Samuel, I am going to Edinburgh. "
Poor Samuel immediately opened his large eyes, and with an
air sheepish and stupefied answering me " My good sir,
excuse me, your head is turned." "No," said I to him,
" Samuel, my head is not turned ; I am going to Edinburgh,
and I shall depart from here this evening. Go tell your
daughter on the instant that I am still at your house, that she
may continue her outlook, as usual, and inform me the
moment that there are any detachments, in case they should
come to Cortachy throughout the day." Samuel commenced
to annoy me with his remonstrances ; but I imposed silence
upon him, and I replied to him once for all that it was de-
cided, and not to speak to me any more of it.
Never did a day appear to me so long. I was left to my-
self all the time to continual reflections between impatience
and fear of seeing the night arrive. The detachments of
soldiers, the fanatical peasants still more dismal than the
41
soldiers even the towns and the villages to go through are
full of these Calvinistic enemies of the House of Stuart, the
peril to which I should be obliged to expose myself in ad-
dressing myself to the boatmen for passing the arms of the
sea, in short a thousand black ideas came to crowd upon my
mind, the dangers always thickening in enlargement, and the
frightful difficulties which it was necessary to surmount made
me tremble, but did not shake me in my resolution of going
to Edinburgh or to perish in the execution of the attempt.
I ended always in replying to myself as if there were some
one with whom I was holding converse " Very well,
I shall perish, whether in going to the south or to the moun-
tains, it is all the same, and it is a risk throughout all ; but,
if so I get to Edinburgh, I shall be more in safety than
among the mountains, where I have neither parents nor
friends, and where my acquaintances are but of recent date.
I am ready ! Very well ; my fate will be promptly decided
without languishing a long time overwhelmed with misery, as
I should be in the mountains, and after that, perhaps, finish-
ing my days on the scaffold. " These were my reasonings ;
they found but small argument favourable to the course I had
taken to go South, for all appearances were against me ; but
my head was full of the dream, and if the whole earth had
wished me to turn back, they would have made no impres-
sion, nor have prevailed ought upon me. ^/
At last the night arrived, which I had waited for impa-
tiently. I mounted on horseback, with Samuel behind me,
who consented to be my guide as far as the first arm of the sea,
about eight miles from Cortachy, and we left Samuel's house
about ten o'clock at night. There is a small town named For-
far, most renowned for its Presbyterian fanaticism, and whose
inhabitants have signalized latterly their holy zeal by con-
tributing to make Colonel Ker prisoner. Samuel had fore-
warned me that it was necessary to pass through this infernal
town, not having any other road which conducted to
42
Broughty, a village on the border of the first arm of the sea,
or abandoning the great routes to pass it ; so I departed late
from the house of Samuel, in order to pass through this
execrable town during the time that these unworthy inhabi-
tants were sunk in their most profound sleep. At the moment
that we entered into this abominable hole a dog barked and
terrified poor Samuel, who was a very honest good man, but
very timorous, and naturally an excessive poltroon. Seized
with a terrible panic he became like a fool, and wished by
main force to throw himself under the horse to fly from it.
I caught hold of the skirt of his garment, and tied it under
the horse in spite of all his efforts to disengage it, fearing that
the fright he had received had turned his head altogether. I
would not suffer him to fly (although in the best possible dis-
position, in cold blood, to serve me), and to leave me in the
most cruel embarrassment, for I did not know the country,
and I should never have been able alone to find the road
to return to Cortachy without being obliged to ask from
village to village, in exposing myself to be made prisoner by
this rabble. He wriggled himself about continually, and
threw himself on to the ground, but I prevented him from
unloosing himself from off the saddle by the hold which I
had of his dress with my right hand. I exhorted him to be
calm, I scolded him. I prayed him, I threatened him, but
always without any effect; his head was no longer his own.
I was pleased to say to him, " But, Samuel, it is but a dog
that's barking ;" he heard nothing that I could say to him.
He was not possessed of himself ; he poured out great drops,
and trembled like one in a fever. Fortunately, I had an
excellent horse. The day after the battle of Culloden, being
opposite the Castle of Macpherson of Cluny, Rose, which had
saved me from the battle, was ready to tumble under me, not
being able longer to sustain himself on his legs, I met my
Lady Macpherson on the high road, when she told me that
there were seven or eight persons who had left their horses
43
near to that to save themselves on foot in the mountains ; and
that I could take one of the best of them. I set spurs to my
horse, and passed through the town at full speed, to leave as
fast as it was possible this troublesome crisis, always holding
on by his dress, and as soon as we were beyond it (no one
having turned out of his house), poor Samuel began to
breathe again. Having come to himself he made me a thou-
sand apologies for his terror, and promised upon his word that
he would never again behave in that manner come what
might.
When the day began to appear, I dismounted from the
horse, which I offered in a present to Samuel, not being able
longer to keep him on account of the passage of the arm of
the sea. But Samuel would not take him, saying that his
neighbours, seeing him in possession of a fine horse, would
immediately suspect that he had harboured some rebel, whom
he had aided to save himself, and that they would immediately
inform the judges, who would indict him ; and the horse
being a proof against him, they would condemn him to be
hanged. I took off the saddle and bridle, which we threw
to the bottom of a pool ; and we drove the horse into the
fields at a little distance from the high road, in order that any
one who might find him might take him for a stray horse.
We had much difficulty in putting at a distance from us this
animal, which followed us for some time like a dog.
We had marched only about a quarter of an hour after
having set the horse at liberty, when we encountered a friend
of Samuel's, who questioned him hardly to know where he
was going, what he was going to do, and who I was. Samuel
answered him, without becoming excited, what I could
have little expected of him since the adventure of the dog at
Forfar, that he was going to look after a calf which he had
placed last autumn for wintering in the low country ; as to
this young man whom you see, as he had no bread, I have
taken him out of charity, and he serves me for his meat. I
44
am going to send him back again to my house with the calf,
while I shall go to Dundee to buy a cow, which will serve to
provide my family during the summer. There was a public-
house near to that, where the two friends adjourned to drink
a bottle of beer together, and it was necessary that I should
go on with them there. I always showed so much respect for
my new master, that I would not even sit down beside him till
he told me to sit down. Samuel's friend insisted greatly on
me to drink a cup of that small beer, which had exactly the
taste of a medicine ; but Samuel exempted me from it, making
such a great eulogy of my sobriety and good character, that
his friend paid me without ceasing a thousand little atten-
tions ; wishing from time to time to get a youth like me for
the same wages ; and I believe I was able to discover some
small desire to detach me from the service of Samuel, to enter
into his own. After having emptied some pots of beer, they
left the inn and separated, affording me infinite pleasure ; for
not only was I very much embarrassed to act the part which
Samuel had given me to play, but their foolish jargon annoyed
me to death. Scarcely had this man left us than Samuel
whispered in my ear that he was one of the greatest knaves
and cheats in the whole province, and greatly renowned for
his roguish tricks. Had he known who I was I would have
been immediately sold ; and the sole temptation of having my
wealth and purse would have been enough to betray me, and
conduct me into the hands of the police. I was so much
astonished at what Samuel told me that I believed then in
good truth they were bound together in friendship, which their
conversation, full of mutual expressions of esteem, left me not
room to doubt. I praised much the prudence and discretion
of my new master on this occasion.
"We do not ordinarily attribute, except to the courts of
Princes, deceit, hypocrisy, and the art of deceiving named,
mal a propos, policy as the only schools for learning false-
hood and dissimulation ; and all men, although masked, know
45
themselves to a certain degree by that which animates their
own interests ; and measuring others after themselves, they
see and judge all that they are in effect; but I saw quite
as much finesse in the false appearances of friendship and
compliments of these two peasants, during the time they were
drinking their beer ; and I was as much their dupe in full as
I was in an interview at which I was present with two Lords
of high rank ;* one of them was one of my best friends, the
other Ambassador to a court where he had promised and
would have been able to have rendered a service to my friend,
who was prescribed and exiled from his country, if he had
been well disposed to it. These two persons embraced each
other with an air of cordiality, saying a thousand flattering
things to one another, and gave themselves mutually all that
one could imagine of the strongest assurances of friendship ;
but the moment M. the Ambassador had finished his visit, and
was gone, my friend made me aware that they both recipro-
cally detested one another. I reproached him for having
played a part so unworthy of an honest and gallant man. He
replied that it was for the purpose of paying the ambassador
home in his own coin.f The pantomime, nevertheless, of these
two Lords would have deceived me less easily, through the idea
generally entertained of the duplicity of courtiers, than that
played by these two peasants, shown by the falsehood and dis-
simulation of the one, and the artfulness of the other, but a
simple natural rustic. Falsehood is in the hearts of men in
general, irrespectively of their rank in the world ! depravity
* M. Le Due de Mirepoix, then ambassador at London, and my Lord
Ogilvie, now Earl of Airlie.
t "To what a degree our politeness," says an author of the year 1448,
" is false and trifling, as that which makes a parade of itself great, odious,
and insulting. It is a mask much more hideous than the most deformed
visage. All these bowings and scrapings, these affectations, and these other
gestures, are insupportable to an honest man. The false brilliancy of our
manners is more detestable than the coarseness of many more rustic, which
is not so revolting." Page 367. Through all, one sees the baseness of man ;
but where is his grandeur ? to be vile in his opinions, odious in his passions.
46
of sentiments which we do not find in the animal races ; for a
dog will not caress when he wishes to bite ; these evil qualities
are reserved alone for the human race. Lying causes man to
depart from his natural state, dishonours him, debases him,
degrades him below the brutes ; and, unfortunately, one finds
it indiscriminately in the heart of one born to govern a king-
dom as well as in that of a peasant.
Having arrived about nine o'clock in the morning a dis-
tance of about half a league from the first arm of the sea,
without knowing how I would have passed it, to whom I
could address myself to find assistance, nor where to find
an asylum in waiting for an opportunity presenting itself to
cross the Firth, I demanded of Samuel if he could not point
out to mo some gentleman in the neighbourhood of Broughty
who was not an enemy to the House of Stuart, but in the
meantime had not joined our army. " On my troth," replied
Samuel, "behold the castle of M. Graham of Dinnetrune, who
answers precisely to what you define, two of whose nephews
were in your army, but he has remained quiet at home with-
out declaring himself." I had not known M. Graham^
having never seen him ; but I had often heard him spoken
of by my sister Hollo, his niece having been companion to
my Lady Rollo, her mother-in-law. M. Graham was of a
very ancient family, a branch of the Grahams, Duke of Mon-
trose, and was one of those who had taken arms in favour of
the House of Stuart in 1715. Having then but small
means after that unfortunate adventure, he got into the ser-
vice of the English East India Company, and rising to the
command of one of their ships, he acquired a considerable
fortune, and again raised his family. I sent Samuel on the
instant to inform M. Graham that he had conducted close to
his mansion an unfortunate gentleman who desired exceed-
ingly to speak with him. Samuel did not delay returning,
telling me that he had found M. Graham, who had ordered
him to conduct me to one of his enclosures, where there were
47
very high furze, and that he would not delay to join me. M.
Graham arrived immediately. I told him who I was, and
prayed him most instantly to procure me a boat to pass the
Firth at Broughty, as this village was not above half-a-league
from his house. I addressed myself to him, persuaded that
he would certainly know all the inhabitants in whom one
could confide. He replied that he would be greatly delighted
to be able to be of use ; that he knew my sister Hollo, having
seen her for a short time at the Castle of Lord Rollo ; and
after a thousand apologies for not being able to run the risk
of making me enter into his Castle (fearing his servants, of
whose fidelity he was not certain), he told me that he would
send forthwith to Broughty to find a boat, asking me at the
same time if I would not wish to breakfast. I told him, that
after having passed six or seven days at the house of Samuel,
with nothing to live upon but oatmeal and water for our food,
I should find very good whatever he should judge proper,
and should do honours to it by my appetite. He went away,
and sent me at once his gardener (of whose fidelity he was
sure), with fresh eggs, butter, cheese, a bottle of white
wine, and another of beer. Never did I eat with so much
voracity ! I devoured seven or eight eggs in a moment, with
much butter, and bread, and cheese. M. Graham returned
into the park, but seeing me drowsy, he left me, reiterating
his assurances that he would send immediately to Broughty
to secure boatmen to transport me that night in a boat to
the other side of the Firth. It was then nearly ten o'clock
in the morning, and fine weather in the month of May.
Having sent back Samuel very well pleased by a gratuity
which I made him far above his expectations, I laid me down
among the broom, which was five feet high, and I slept an
hour, when I was awakened most agreeably by M. Graham
announcing to me the good news that he had engaged the
boatmen, who were assembled to take me across the Firth in
their boat that night at nine o'clock.
48
M. Graham asked me what I would wish for dinner,
making a detail of the good things in his house, all exquisite
for a famished man who had partaken of such meagre fare at
the house of Samuel. He mentioned to me a good sirloin of
beef, and I begged of him not to send me anything else. Al-
though it was then scarcely three hours since I had eaten
copiously, I did not feel myself less strong as I devoured the
sirloin, which I found delicious, and of a taste far above all
I had ever eaten in my life, of the most delicate and refined ;
in fact, I would have been able to have indulged myself in a
repast far more ample, not being able to foresee if I should
make an equal one for a long time.*
M. Graham returned immediately after dinner, bringing
with him a bottle of old claret wine, which was excellent,
and which we emptied together, so that I felt myself in force
and in courage to face all difficulties. He made me aware of
the arrangements he had adopted, that at five o'clock precisely
I should jump over the park wall, at the place which he
shewed me, where I would see the gardener with a sack of
corn on his back, whom it was necessary to follow at some
distance until he should enter into a wind mill ; then there
would appear an old woman in place of the gardener, that
I should follow the same, and who would conduct me to
the village of Broughty. M. Graham kept company with
me till about four o'clock, when he took leave of me, em-
braced me, and wished me the luck of saving myself. I regu-
lated my watch by his to be exact at the rendezvous of the
gardener.
I had yet a mortal hour to wait in the park, which ap-
peared to me long through my impatience. I held my watch,
constantly counting the minutes, and the moment the hand
touched five o'clock, I set myself to follow the order of M.
[* Whether everything eaten of the best fare is enjoyment, or whether
of every thing superabounding, the pleasure is but satiated ; one has always
a feeling for the first necessaries ; one has it not for worn-out tastes.]
49
Graham. I had no difficulty in discovering the gardener,
with the sack of corn on his back ; but I was greatly embar-
rassed to be able to distinguish the old woman among three
or four old women who passed before the mill precisely at the
very instant that the gardener entered it ; and I did not know
which of them it behoved me to follow, until my one, seeing
my embarrassment, made me a sign of the head, which I
comprehended very well. Having arrived at the top of the
eminence which descends to the village of Broughty, she
stopped to inform me that she would go down herself alone,
in order to see if all was ready, and told me to await her
return on the highway were she left me.
Broughty is situated on the sea coast, at the foot of an
eminence, and one does not see it till one is at the top of this
eminence, from which the road descends obliquely to enter
the village. The sun began to set when the good woman
quitted me ; and having waited more than half an-hour on
the highway without her having reappeared, impatience at
the last made me leave the highway, and enter five or six
paces on the laboured land, to approach more nearly the bor-
der of the eminence, in order to perceive if she was on the
way of coming up again, where I lay down on my belly on
the ground in a furrow. I had not been five minutes in this
state, to look out for the old woman, till I heard some one
coming up, and saw a head appear, which I took imme-
diately for her ; but having perceived the head of a horse,
I lay down instantly as before, concealing myself on the
ground with my head turned to the side of the highway,
when I saw pass eight or ten men on horseback at the
point which I had just quitted ; and they had just only passed
when the old woman arrived, quite fluttered as they had
followed her close. I rose up, and having aproachecl
her, " Ah ! " said she to me, in a transport of joy and trem-
bling, as if she had been in a paroxysm of fever, " I never
counted upon finding you again." I told her to calm herself
D
50
and take breath, not comprehending at first what she wished
to say to me ; but being a little restored, she endeavoured to
explain to me the cause of her alarms. She told me that the
men whom I had seen were English dragoons, who came to visit
the village with so much severity and threatening that they had
affrighted so dreadfully the boatmen whom M. Graham had
engaged to ferry me over the Firth, that they would not fur-
thermore undertake to do it. I reproached her a little for her
imprudence and rashness for not having made me aware that
the dragoons were in the village ; for I not only ran a great
risk of having been captured by this detachment, if I had not
quitted by the merest chance the highway where she had told
me to wait for her, but I was tempted at many times, by my
impatience at her tardiness in returning, to descend to the
village, which I would have done had I known the road to
Broughty, or where the public house was, without being
obliged to ask from door to door ; and I should have been
thrown into the mouth of the lion, by the silliness and stupi-
dity of this woman, whose imbecility made me touch closely
the scaffold ! What a dire position we are in when our life
depends upon the conduct of narrow-minded people ! She
answered me, that on entering into the tavern to find the
boatmen, she was so overcome by seeing it full of soldiers
that she was demented and did not know further what she
should do. It was a dreadful disaster for me that the boat-
men would not move farther, at the moment when I believed
I had half saved myself by the certain passage of the Firth.
I beseeched the old woman to conduct me to the tavern where
the boatmen were, but she had no desire to return thither,
excusing herself upon the uselessness of going there the boat-
men being so terrified at the threatenings of the soldiers, added
she, that they would not ferry me over that night for all the
gold in the world, and that I had no other course to take but
to return to M. Graham's house, who would find means to
conceal me till the next day, at night, that the boatmen
51
would be recovered from their fright. I could not endure the
idea of retracing my steps, the more especially that, being
upon the border of the Firth which had cost me so much
anxiety of mind and wishes to arrive at, and which was so
difficult to pass, on account of its nearness to the moun-
tainous districts, and detachments of dragoons, who were con-
tinually patrolling upon its banks, the reflection that there
was no depending for a moment upon the good dispositions of
the boatmen to set me free this unfortunate condition ren-
dered me obstinate, and I hoped to secure them by force of
money or persuasion; so I always persevered in assuring the
old woman that this was the most favourable opportunity ia the
world, since the dragoons, not having any trace of rebels,
would not return a second time that night to revisit the vil-
lage. At length she listened to my reasons, and consented. .
although with some repugnance, to conduct me thither. ^^
On entering into the the tavern, the hostess, who called
herself Mrs. Burne, whispered into my ear to fear nothing in
her house, and that she had a daughter in our army with my
Lord Ogilvie. I regarded this as a very good omen. She
showed me immediately the boatmen who had promised to
M. Graham to carry me over to the other side of the Firth
in their boat. I addressed myself to them, whom I found
still trembling and terrified at the threats of the soldiers.
All my offers, my prayers, and my entreaties, amounted to
nothing; and having employed half an hour at this un-
successfully, I perceived that two daughters of Mrs. Burue,
who were beautiful as Venus, the eldest of whom was
scarcely eighteen years of age, were not indifferent to the
boatmen, by the glances which they cast upon them from time
to time. I quitted these stupid brutes to attach myself to the
two pretty girls, in order to enlist them in my interests,
and make use of them in opposition to the boatmen, as it is
natural for the sweethearts to have all power with their lovers.
I caressed them, I embraced them, one after the other. I
52
said to them a thousand flattering and obliging things, and
veritably I had no difficulty in playing this game ; for they
were of the most ravishing beauty, and my sincere compliments
proceeded from the heart. I was determined to pass the night
at Mrs. Burne's, in case I should not succeed in crossing
the Firth, and I sent back the old woman.
At the end of half an hour, I had got my two beauties en-
tirely in my interests, and each of them made a bold assault
upon her lover, making them all the prayers and entreaties
possible, but with as little success as myself, and without
being able to bend them the terrors of these stupid lovers
being much stronger than their love. The beautiful and
charming Mally Burne, the eldest of the two, repulsed to the
end, and, indignant at their obstinacy, turned to her sister,
and said to her, "Ah! Jenny, these are lazy and despicable
cowards. I would not for any thing in the world that this
unfortunate gentleman should be taken in our house. I feel
pity for him. Will you take an oar ? I will take another,
and we will go across ourselves, to the eternal disgrace of
these two raggamuffins without souls." Jenny consented
without hesitation. I fell upon their neck, and gave them a
thousand tender embraces alternately, the one after the
other, from the bottom of my heart.
I thought at first that the resolution of these generous
girls would have influenced their lovers ; but these lazy dogs
more beasts than the brutes themselves were not in
the least degree moved by them, preserving their indif-
ference, and leaving it to be done by these charming beauties
without being in the smallest degree affected by it. Seeing
the stubbornness of the boatmen, and wishing to profit by the
offer of these charming girls, I took upon the instant two oars
upon my shoulders, and marched to the borders of the Firth
"between my two beauties. I launched the boat into the water,
find these amiable girls having entered it, I pushed it along ;
then taking one of the oars to myself, I gave them the other
53
to row by turns, by relieving one another, when they should
feel themselves fatigued. I experienced at that moment that
every kind of skill may become useful. During the stay
which I made in Russia, where they often made parties of
pleasure on the river, I amused myself sometimes in rowing,
little then foreseeing that I should avail myself of it one day
to save my life. We left Broughty at ten o'clock at night,
and we arrived at midnight at the other side of the Firth,
which is about two miles in breadth ; the weather being fine,
starlight, and sufficiently clear to distinguish the way. I ad-
mired the conduct of Heaven towards me, and the visible
effects of Providence ; but at the moment when I thought of
my good fortune in having escaped the detachment of cavalry,
and having passed the Firth, it came into my mind at the
same time the infinite number of such encounters, which
would necessarily befall me, still to encounter before being
saved in foreign lands; and this reflection chilled the joy that
I would have otherwise experienced. My two beauties
having disembarked with me, to put me into the highway
which leads to the town of St. Andrews, I took leave of these
charming girls, truly enamoured of their sentiments and gene-
rosity, quitting them with a sensible regret, as I should never
see them again. I embraced them a thousand times, one after
the other ; and as they obstinately insisted on not receiving
any recompense in money, I found means of sliding ten or
twelve shillings into the pocket of the charming Mally, who
was one of the most perfect beauties that nature had formed,
made to be painted, with an elegant manner, and with all the
graces possible. In any other position they would have been
able to have tempted me to make a stay in their village ; and
if it should be my lot to return to my native country, I shall
certainly be at Broughty expressly to see them.
I had not been able to form any plan of advance that I
should make, or the route which I ought to follow ; a thou-
sand obstacles to surmount sprung up at every step, while un-
54
foreseen circumstances also presented themselves in my
favour. Ever attentive to preserve my sang froid, and my
reflection, to be able to meet troublesome and unexpected en-
counters, and to avail myself rapidly of propitious incidents
which might attend fortune (equally fickle in its favours and
repulses), I always experienced a mixture of good and bad
events, but uncertain which would preponderate in my lot.
I could not recollect during my crossing the Firth of any per-
son of my acquaintance who dwelt in the extent of the land
between the two arms of the sea, which was about twelve
miles in breadth almost all the gentlemen of the county,
which they call Fife, having taken up arms for Prince
Edward, were in the same situation as myself. I could not
see any person there to whom I could address myself besides
my cousin, Mrs. Spence, whose two grandmothers were sisters,
daughters of Douglas, Baron of Whittengeme, a branch of the
house of the Duke of Douglas. She had an estate close to
St. Andrews, and made her ordinary residence in that town ;
but St. Andrews was at all times the most fanatical town in
Scotland, renowned by the assassination of their Archbishop,
the Cardinal Bethune. Full of a malignant race of Cal-
vinistic hypocrites, who masked their wickedness under the
cloak of religion, the greatest cheats and rascals in their inter-
course, and who, nevertheless, carried their sanctified dissim-
ulation so far as to lift their bonnet in taking a pinch of snuff
to ask God's blessing on it ; in short, who have always the
name of God in their mouths, and the devil in their hearts ;
a city truly worthy of the fate of Sodom and Gommorrah.
Meantime, I resolved to go thither. It was a seaport, and I
was seduced with the hope, of finding there my passage in
some ship for foreign parts by means of my cousin, Mrs.
Spence.
Having marched the whole night, as soon as the day
began to appear, I stopped upon the border of a rivulet to
assuage my feet, the toes of which were blistered and peeled
55
even to the bones as with a razor, by my thick stockings and
rustic shoes, which I found full of blood when I detached
myself from them to put my feet to trample in the water ; I felt
immediately by the bathing the shooting pains less violent and
more supportable. During two hours that I remained there,
my feet always in the rivulet, I experienced a sweetness, and
serenity overspread my soul, and a tranquility of spirits,
without the least agitation, and without the more light
effusions of the passions which prevailed, like as in my sleep
in Samuel's house after the dream which made me enter into
the rash enterprise of attempting to go to Edinburgh, although . ^ j
at the same time overpowered, and in a condition to move
compassion in the breast of the most hardened. I was
resigned to die, and I prayed the Supreme Being with
extreme fervour to be pleased of his goodness and pity to
terminate in an instant my sorrowful existence ! Certainly
the prospect of death, at any other time so formidable, but
which I then regarded as my greatest good, would have ap-
peared sweet and delightful, and would not have had any-
thing terrible in it. I regretted bitterly not having been
killed at the battle of Culloden, having escaped it so nearly ;
and I envied the lot of my comrades who were reposing dead
upon the field of battle. The horrible idea of seeing an exe-
cutioner with a knife in his hand ready to rip up my bowels
while alive*, and tear out my heart, still beating, and throw
it in the fire ; my imagination was impressed with the idea
that I should have the dismal fate of being taken, and this
reflection made an impression so strong upon me by the pro-
spect of thus perishing on the scaffold in presence of a cruel
and barbarous populace, that I was often tempted to shorten
my days in a moment on the borders of this rivulet, which
were become burdensome to me; and in my position the
pleasures of existence appeared to me a very small thing. f
* The mode of punishment to which all those were subjected who had
the misfortune to be taken and condemned.
f I reasoned with myself on the immortality of the soul.
56
How do the effects of hope terminate, the smallest ray of
which supports the unfortunate in spite of the evidence of
danger the most inevitable, inspires him with a supernatural
courage, diffuses a balm even on the wounds which produce
his death, and seems to disarm the hand of the suicide. Is
it in the power of Providence to give to man a succour and a
consolation more useful and more efficacious ? and by a
gracious felicity the unfortunate are not deficient in hopes ;
they do not see in all their projects but the termination of
their evils. It is from this that they terminate all their com-
plexities. I implored the Almighty, that if it was my destiny
thus to perish in sufferings, at least not to leave me to languish
a long time between life and death cruel incertitude and a
terrible alternative to support. I put on my stockings and
shoes, and rose to depart, but scarcely was I able to keep myself
from falling, my stockings and shoes being indurated with
blood ; as soon as I began to move a pace, I felt pains which
pierced me to the heart. I took off my shoes and stockings ;
I put my feet into the water, and having immersed my stock-
ings and shoes in the rivulet for half an hour to soften them, I
then found myself in a condition to walk, and I departed. I
met a countryman after an hour on the road, who told me
that it was still four miles from St. Andrews. I flattered
myself that the peasant was mistaken ; but I found in the
end these miles as long as the leagues in the environs of
Paris. According to report of the peasant, I had made ten
of these miles since midnight that I left the boat. I arrived
at St. Andrews about eight o'clock in the morning, much
fatigued. It was Sunday, and the streets were full of people,
who stopped me at every pace to ask at me news of the
rebels. I always answered them that I knew nothing, hav-
ing come only from Dundee, a town almost as fanatical as St.
Andrews. I asked for the house of Mrs. Spence on entering
the town, and having found it, I said to her chambermaid I
had a letter to deliver to her mistress into her own hands.
57
She led me into the chamber of Madam Spence, who was
still in bed, and immediately she retired. My cousin did not
recognise me at first, owing to my disguise ; but having
examined me for a moment, she cried, bursting into a torrent
of tears., " Ah ! my dear child, you are lost without
resource ; how have you ever been able to think of coming
to St. Andrews, and to a house so much suspected as mine. "
She was a Roman Catholic. " The populace yesterday,"
added she, "made prisoner the son of my neighbour, Mr.
Ross (who was disguised like a peasant), before he had even
rested half-an-hour in his father's house, and he is actually
in prison at Dundee, loaded with irons. " I did not expect a
reception like this, but I saw quite well the false step I had
taken, and I was very uneasy to get out of it. I beseeched
her for mercy's sake to calm herself, otherwise that she
would be the means of betraying me, by raising suspicions
on my account in the minds of her servants. Being a little
tranquilized, she wrote immediately to her tenant, who
was at a quarter of a league from the town, to give me a
horse, and conduct me as far as "Wemyss, a village on the
border of the Firth, which I had yet to pass in order to
arrive at Edinburgh, about ten miles from St. Andrews.
This was all that I could desire for the best, for I was over-
whelmed with fatigue, and the wounds iii my feet. She
mentioned in her letter to the farmer that she was sending
under my charge to Edinburgh papers absolutely necessary,
and very pressing for her process, which was about to be
decided in Edinburgh in a few days. I took leave of my
cousin immediately, without having even sat down in her
house, and I left with a little girl which she sent to conduct
me to the house of her tenant, taking by-roads across the
gardens, not to appear more in the streets of that execrable
town. When I was out of it, the nattering idea of having a
horse as far as Wemyss gave me new strength and courage to
support my pains.
58
I delivered the letter to the farmer, and the reply of this
animal petrified me as a statue. " Mrs. Spence," said he to
me, " is mistress to deprive me of my farm, to give it to
whom she pleases, but she is not able to make me profane
the day of the Lord, by giving my horse to travel on Sunday."
I represented to him with all the energy possible the necessity
of having a horse on account of the process of Mrs. Spence,
and that the delay in sending the papers to her advocate
might be productive of the greatest loss to her ; but all that
I could say had not the least effect, and he persisted obsti-
nately in his refusal. This holy scoundrel made no scruple
to deceive and cheat his neighbours on the Sabbath as on
other days, nor to spill upon the scaffold the blood of the
unfortunate gentlemen whom they had made prisoners in
their infernal raids, who had never done them any ill, and
whom they even did not know.* These hypocrites, the execra-
tion and the refuse of the human race, with their eyes con-
tinually lifted up to heaven, use as a mask all that is most
sacred to deceive more securely ; and, unfortunately, this
same spirit of hypocrisy is found indifferently in all religions, f
"The man of the people," says a modern author, "is altogether a
perfect savage, whose spirit and whose heart have not been in the smallest
degree cultivated ; the care of his manners is committed to priests who are
content to fill his imagination with terrors, fables, and chimeras, and oblige
him to conform to their wicked practices not dreaming in the smallest
degree to render him either reasonable or sociable. In general, the people
in every country are very devout, very credulous, very zealous for religion,
of which they comprehend nothing,, very much disposed to the interest of
their priests, whom they follow blindly ; but they remain always in complete
ignorance of the principles of true morality ; they have no idea of equity,
humanity, sensibility ; they find the secret of allying religion with debauch-
ery, sensuality, and, often, with crime. These fanatics veil their infamies
and wickednesses by their devotion."
+ e ' In fine," says Puffendorff, " there is not an animal naturally more
dangerous and more indomitable than man, nor more inclined to vices cal-
culated to disturb society, so far as it pleases him to exercise his fury against
his fellow men ; and that the most part of the evils to which human life is
subject proceed manifestly from man himself." Duties of Man and Citizen ,
tome ii.j page 56.
59
Never could I fail to have great distrust of those who made
themselves known with ostentation as zealous observers
of the ceremonial part of religion, and by an outward devo-
tion their actions rarely conforming thereto, which is a mani-
fest proof of their falsehood. In place of that, true piety is
concealed in the heart, and seeks not the applause of the
public. I would not fear these despicable minions in an open
campaign, or in the villages ; for these wicked and cruel mor-
tals are always cowards, and these qualities are infallible
signs of their want of heart. In knocking out the brains of one
of these monsters with one of my pistols, I would make my
retreat with the other pistol in my hand without any of these
dastards ever daring to offer opposition ; but I was not tran-
quil during the quarter of an hour that J-was in the town of
St. Andrews.
Frustrated in my hopes of getting a horse, I immediately
quitted the house of the farmer, without having sat down
therein, and took the road to Wemyss. What a horrible situa-
tion ! Crippled by the wounds in my feet, which made me ex-
perience a pain so sharp that the shootings deprived me some-
times nearly altogether of breathing not knowing to whom
to address myself at the village of Wemyss, supposing that I
should yet retain strength to make out these ten miles-^for-
seeing the risk that I should run there of being seized at the
first inn at which I should ask to pass the night in fine, not
knowing what to do nor where to go. I found luckily a rivu-
let about half a-mile from that execrable town. I laid at a
distance from me my musket off the highway, and having
pulled off my shoes and stockings at the edge of the water, I
Hobbes says in his treatise on Man, " Forasmuch as swords and guns
are the arms of men, the brute beasts are provided with nails, teeth, and
stings : so man surpasses in rapacity and cruelty the wolves, the bears, the
serpents, who do not exercise their rapacity, bxit when hunger impels ; nor
their cruelty, but when they are irritated ; and hunger itself in the distance
renders man famished. All the scourges of nature do not revolt the human
heart equal to the injuries of man."
GO
found the wounds of my feet considerably increased, the
blood running from them like a torrent. I put my feet to
steep in the water, as formerly, and did the same with my
shoes and stockings, which were full of blood. But this was
not my greatest evil : I had the mind as much lacerated and
tormented as the body. The hopes that I had formed of any
asylum and succour from my cousin Spence had vanished into
air, and the ten long miles from Broughty to St. Andrews
were useless and completely lost. I relapsed into a depres-
sion of mind and body which I had never felt before. It
was in vain that I racked my imagination to discover some
resource. I could see none. The castle of Lord Hollo was
at the side of the Firth, but at the distance of twenty-five
miles to the south. I was convinced of the friendship of his
Lordship and the benevolence of all his family ; but how was
I to get there ? It was several days' journey for me, then,
so fatigued and knocked up. Besides, supposing that I
should be able to get there, I should find myself at a greater
distance from Edinburgh than in the place where I was. I
did not know which way to turn me. In the meantime, I saw
no other course to take ; and, in short, I decided on it,
forming my plan to make the way by short journeys, and
always to sleep in the fields, to avoid as much as I could the
towns and villages which I should find in my way in going
to Lord Eollo's.
The body borne down with pains and fatigues, and the
mind cruelly agitated and tormented lost in an abyss of
reflections, all of a sudden I recollected myself of a chamber-
maid of my mother, who was married some two years before
to George Lillie, gardener to M. Bethune, at Balfour, whose
mansion was not but half a league from Wemyss. This girl
having had a great deal of pains and cares for my mother
during a long illness which she had suffered, my father, in
consideration of her attachment, paid the expense of the
nuptials. I knew well that Lillie was a Calvinist, and one of
61
the most furious and outrageous in these districts ; but, from
the favours he had received from my family, I did not dread
treachery on his part, supposing he should not lend himself
to my service ; and, in case he should incline to- receive me
into his house, I should be there in the greatest security.
The remembrance of Lillie and his wife gave me an absence
of mind so inconceivable, that I wished upon the instant to
go thither, without thinking even of going to sleep, and with-
out perceiving that I had not rested, not having had a quar-
ter of an hour that I had sat down, and I felt no more
neither my weariness nor my pains. Zeno and the Stoics, a
sect of philosophers, have maintained that there are neither
real pleasures nor pains, and that different sensations depend
upon fixed attention upon our enjoyments and our suf-
ferings. It is certain that, in this moment of absence of
mind, I did not feel any more the pains of my feet, though
very violent ; but from this reverie I was awakened in an
instant. This philosophy would be a grand happiness to men
if these philosophers were able to teach us the art of with-
drawing our attention when we pleased.*
I had eaten nothing since my repast in the enclosure at
Dinnetrune, where M. Graham filled my pockets with bread
and cheese. In fact, I had always had my mind too much
occupied to feel hunger ; but my appetite returned with my
* " One pleasure which I have searched for/' says the Abbe cle Cardillae,
" equally recals all the agreeable ideas with which it is possible to be allied ;
the imagination reviews many sensible perceptions for me which it receives ;
and in that state it enjoys pleasures the most vivid. When it seizes on the
action of my imagination, I feel immediately an enchantment. By this ex-
plication, we feel that the pleasures of the imagination are as real, and also
as natural, as others, although one pronounces generally the contrary ex-
ample : A man tormented by the gout, and who is not able to bear it, per-
ceives in a moment that he has thereby at least recovered a sense that he
believed to be lost more pain ; an instant after, the fire has been set to his
house more weakness ; he is already out of danger when he dreams of suc-
cour. His imagination, suddenly and vividly struck, reacts upon all parts
of his frame, and produces a revolution that saves him." Essay on the Origin
of Human Knowledge.
62
hope of finding a refuge at the house of Lillie ; and taking
out of my pocket some of the bread and cheese, I made a good
repast of them during the time my feet, shoes, and stockings,
soaked themselves in the stream. My strength and courage
returned at the same time ; and having taken two hours repose,
and placed some white paper under the wounds of my feet, to
prevent the rubbing of my shoes and stockings, I made six
miles all on a stretch without stopping, the half of the road from
St. Andrews to Wemyss, and there did not remain more than
four from that to Balfour. The desire and impatience to be
there made me feel less keenly my fatigues and pains. I still
found a rivulet where I could repose, making the same oper-
ations as formerly. My toes and feet were in a most
pitiable case, lacerated and torn even to the bone, of which I
shall retain the marks all my life, having the second toe of
my left foot entirely twisted by the cruel journey. In the
meantime, they did not hinder me from accomplishing the
other four miles to Balfour, although suffering the most
excessive pains ; and I arrived there about nine o'clock in
the evening, with joy and pleasure which surpass imagination.
When I found myself within a short space from the house
of Lillie, I seized the door with both my hands to prevent
me from falling to the ground. My strength was totally
exhausted, and would not have enabled me to go a step farther
to have even saved me from the scaffold. With difficulty my
legs were able to support me in dragging me up to the door.
What will necessity and the desire of preserving one's exis-
tence in a case such as mine not do, seeming to give an increase
of power to sustain incredible efforts. Having knocked,
Lillie came to open the door to me ; and not having recognised
me under my beggarly dress, he said to me several times with
quickness and fright, "Who are you? What are you seek-
ing? What do you want?" I did not answer him, but I
advanced inside the door, fearing that he would shut me out
by the nose ; this made him redouble his terror, and he was
quite trembling, taking me for some robber. I asked him if
he had any stranger in his house ? His wife, who was seated
before the fire, recognised my voice, and perceiving my
habiliments, she cried immediately to her husband " Oh !
great God! I know him; shut the door quickly." Lillie
obeyed without further examining me ; and following me up
to the light he also recognised me. In spite of my grievous
condition I could not keep myself from laughing at the atti-
tude of Lillie at the moment of his surprise in distinguishing
me under my disguise. Confounded, stupefied, petrified as a
statue, he joined his hands together, even lifting his eyes to
heaven. "Ah!" said .he to me, u this does not surprise me !
My wife and I were speaking of you yesterday evening ; and
I said to her, that for all the world I believed that you were
with that wicked race." I answered him that he had reason
to believe that, from the principles of attachment in which I
had been brought up for the House of Stuart. "Actually,"
added I to him, "it is necessary to assist me, my poor George,
to save me from the powers that be. " This was a melan-
choly adventure, and truly humiliating for Lillie, to be
obliged to give an asylum to a rebel, and to find himself
under the necessity, from gratitude, to succour one of those
whom he so much decried ! he who, of all the country, had
been one of the greatest orators against the rebels, with his
voice in their meetings, louder than others in exclamations
against the Pope and the Pretender, whom he always joined
together. Lillie was an honest man, notwithstanding his
fanatical principles. He assured me that he was penetrated
with my condition, and he would do all that could depend
upon him to save me and get me across the Firth as soon as
it should be possible. Finding me as an automaton, without
the power of moving either arm or leg, Lillie and his wife
undressed me, and (the gardeners in Scotland all making a
trade of quackery), Lillie having bathed the wounds in my
feet with whisky, which made me suffer an insupportable
64
pain, applied to them in the end a balm, and they put on me
their stockings and slippers. I found myself solaced by this
operation, and as it were resuscitated.
I sent Lillie to make my compliments to his master, M.
Bethune, beseeching him not to consider me bad if his gar-
dener lost some hours of work, I being at his house and in
great need of his services. M. Bethune sent back Lillie on
the instant to say to me on his part that he was in despair at
not being able to come and see me, having been indisposed
for some time, and having that moment gone to bed ; that he
could do no more than offer me a bed at his house, where I
would be much better than in Lillie's, but that he begged me
most instantly to send and fetch freely from his house what-
ever I should stand in need of. He wished that Lillie should
take charge of chickens, wine, and other things; but from
some desire that Lillie had to afford me good cheer at his own
house, he very prudently did not wish to take anything,
fearing, as he said to me, that it might create suspicion
among M. Bethune's domestics that he had some one con-
cealed in his house. I praised Lillie much for his prudence
and discretion. Mrs. Lillie brought me quickly a plate of
collops, which I devoured in haste, having more desire to
sleep than to eat ; having been two days and as many
nights always on the march, since my departure from
Samuel's, without having slept but three hours in the enclo-
sure of M. Graham. Lillie having undressed me, carried me
in his arms to bed ; it was impossible for me to put my foot
to the ground for all things in the world. I slept in one con-
tinued slumber from ten o'clock in the evening to the next day,
at nine and a half hours in the evening, twenty-three hours
and a half without ever awakening, Mr. Lillie having given
orders not to make the least noise, and not having wished to
awaken me to receive the visit of M. Bethune, who had
come to see me.
As nothing restores the exhausted body so much as sleep,
65
the precious gift of nature, and a boon of heaven in our suffer-
ings, I felt myself greatly refreshed, the body so well
restored, and it was only my feet which caused me to suffer
much. Mrs. Lillie had a chicken ready lo put upon the spit
the moment I should awake. I ate it in my bed before I
rose. Lillie having removed the dressing which he had put
upon my feet, replaced it by another. He told me that his
wife's mother kept an inn in the village of Wemyss, much
frequented by fishers ; that perhaps she would find me some
one of her acquaintance who would willingly put me across
the Firth ; and he proposed that I should go there with him
if I was in a condition to travel, Wemyss being not more than
half a league from Balfour. I was not displeased that Lillie,
in his desire to shake himself clear of me, was as anxious to
save me as I was myself. He offered me a horse on the part
of M. Bethune, but before accepting it, I wished to try my
strength and see if I was in a state to travel. Having arisen
and made the tour of the bed-chamber, supported by his
arms, I saw that I was able to do without the horse. Mrs.
Lillie, with usual attention, during the time that I slept had
cut the feet of my great boots to make the stockings more
comfortable ; in spite of that I always suffered great pain in
my feet.
We set out towards half-past ten in the evening, and I
walked with pain ; borne up rather by support on the arms of
Lillie, he trailed me after him ; but the hope of finding an
opportunity of crossing the Firth, and going up to Edinburgh,
prevented me from feeling the pains which at any other time
would have appeared to me unsupportable. Along the road,
I said to him jokingly, " My poor Lillie, if I am actually taken
in our journey, what a figure you would cut. You never durst
shew yourself to advantage in these pious assemblies. Your
reputation of the good Calvinist would be gone without re-
source." He let escape a deep sigh, and cried out, "Ah!
Sir, do not speak to me of that." I made an attempt to laugh,
E
66
and continued, "It is true, Lillie, you would not be injured
all your life like me, but your character would be lost for ever
among your brethren." I amused myself during the whole
route in making similar remarks to him, and I had the pleasure
of observing that he regarded his honour as completely en-
gaged, and that he sought to get me across the Firth as soon
as possible as much for fear of being discovered at his house,
as to make a merit in the estimation of my family.
Arrived at the house of his mother-in-law, she told us
that of all the fishers of Wemyss she did not know anyone
that one could trust, except one named Salmon, adding that
he was a very zealous Calvinist, and a violent enemy against
the party of Prince Edward ; but, besides, a man of wealth,
and much distinguished in the village for his probity and good
manners ; that we could apply to him immediately, and that
if he did not incline to render me a service, he was too hon-
ourable a man to do me an injury.
We went instantly to the house of Salmon. It was nearly
midnight, and we found him already up, and engaged arrang-
ing his nets to go a-fishing. Knowing the voice of Lillie, he
opened the door to us. Lillie, after many efforts, at length
broke silence with a plaintive tone of voice, and a humble air,
abashed, bashful, and embarrassed. "Salmon, my friend,"
said he to him, " behold the only son of my wife's mistress.
He has been fool and rash enough to join that wicked race
which seeks to destroy our religion, and renders us slaves.
Behold, my friend, the miserable state to which he has reduced
himself. Everybody knows the kindness his family has be-
stowed upon my wife and me at our marriage. I honour
them and respect them ; and I fear much that if he were taken
it would cause the death of his mother, as well as his father,
for they are very much attached to him, being their only son.
I come, my friend Salmon, to beg you with joined hands to
give him a passage tomorrow in your boat when you go to
Leith to sell your fish." The pathetic manner in which Lillie
67
spoke to Salmon gave me pleasure ; but the reply, couched in
a morose tone, did not please me so well, and gave me no hope
of relief. " You deserve well," said Salmon, "when you save
his life you who wish to abolish our holy religion, destroy
our liberties, and render us slaves. No, Lillie, he addresses
himself badly to me. I would not do him any evil I am not
capable of informing against him he is in safety in that
respect ; but he ought not to expect that I will ever do him a
service, nor any one of that wicked race of rebels." I offered
him all the gold that I had remaining six guineas to carry
me over next day in his shallop ; but he was not inclined to
listen to speaking about advantage. I could not ; and seeing
that it was not on the side of interest that he could be taken,
not being selfish, and that he appearing from his physiog-
nomy to be an honest man,* I had no other resource than to
abandon my enterprise. I had offered him all my money
without making any impression upon him. I hoped still to
convert him in my favour by persuasion. As he kept an
inn, I requested of him at least to have the pleasure of drink-
ing a bottle of beer with him. He consented ; and I did not
spare the beer, drinking cup after cup with them : in the mean-
time without speaking any further of my passage, but always
attentive to insinuate myself into his good graces, to render him
propitious to my wishes. At the end of an hour, he turned
his head to Lillie, and said to him, " It is a great pity that
this young man has been seduced and perverted by that un-
worthy rabble of rebels ; he is a good boy." Lillie profited
cleverly by this to let fall some words in my favour, and said
to him that it would not be long ere he repented it severely.
* A mirror more true, more expressive than his gesture, his discourse,
and even his accent, which could sometimes disguise itself, but which could
not paint this rapid light which divides the soul, which has its involuntary
course glistening in the eyes even of a knave, who feigns zeal and draws the
curtain, and wishes to shape it to his own soul ; but it escapes, it pierces his
disguises, and leaves him to see himself naked in spite of every effort to the
contrary.
68
I did not appear to understand them ; but I saw my affairs
were in a prosperous way; and I continued to push the bottles
of small beer, which was weak as water. In short, I played
my part so well, and gained so entirely the friendship of Sal-
mon, that this honest man offered me all at once a passage in
his long boat next day, without wishing to be understood as
speaking of money, but from a pure and noble generosity on
his part. It is true, this was not a game difficult to play face
to face with poor Salmon, a man truly virtuous and respected
by all the village for his good morals and excellent qualities,
as the mother of Mrs. Lillie had told me of him ; and a
virtuous man can never have a hard heart, but is always sus-
ceptible of compassion and humanity for the unfortunate.
In whatever class among men one finds virtue, it pleases, and
one is prepossessed in favour of him who possesses it. Thus,
one is not obliged to do violence to one's sentiments, to say
flattering, obliging, and courteous things to a worthy man,
whatever be the lowness of his condition, as one is in presence
of a Lord of the first rank without merit, and whose elevation
is the effect of chance.
Salmon had but one share of the long boat with several
other fishers, and he had the circumspection of guarding him-
self in presence of his partners. He told me to conceal myself
in a cave which was in sight of the sea, about a gun-shot
from Wemyss ; and at the break of day, when I should see
the fishing boats reurning into port, I should come down and
demand from the one where I should see him if he would give
me a passage to Leith on payment ; that he would answer me,
" Oh, yes;" and he would settle immediately with his partners
as to the price. If any one of the boat should not be willing
to agree, he would engage them to consent to it Salmon and
Lillie at the same time teaching me the accent of a countryman
in which I should address them. I quitted Salmon, putting
a guinea into his hand, telling him that that was only arles.
He made difficulty in accepting it, representing to me that I
69
ought to save it, because it was not gain that induced him
to render me a service. Lillie having accompanied me as far
as the cave, took leave to return home, and offered me an
asylum at his house in case this opportunity should not be
successful. Although I regarded my passage across this arm
of the sea as beyond doubt, I was very glad to find a secure
retreat at the house of Lillie it being impossible to forsee
the troublous circumstances that might occur to me.
This cave was one of the curious antiquities of Scotland,
and according to tradition was formerly a Pagan Temple.
It is scooped out under a mountain, the entry of which
may be about five feet in height, and three feet in breadth,
and the edge of the sea is at a distance of about thirty paces
from the foot of the mountain. It is very high and spacious
inside, and appears to have been of an immense depth. An
adventure happened to James II., King of Scotland, in this
cavern, which has rendered 'it celebrated. The King, who
amused himself going about the country under different dis-
guises, found himself overtaken by a violent storm in a dark
night, and took refuge in this cavern to afford him a shelter
from the tempestuous weather. Having foisted himself inside,
he found there a great many men and women, ready to seat
themselves at a table to sup upon a roast sheep. He supposed
at first by their looks that he had not fallen into good hands ;
but it was beyond his power to retreat, and he begged their
hospitality until the storm was over. They consented to this,
and invited the King, whom they did not know, to sit down
at the table with them to partake of part of their supper.
This was a band of robbers and assassins. Immediately on
their finishing their supper, one of them presented an ashet
upon which there were two poignards in the form of a St.
Andrew's Cross, saying at the same time to the King that
that was the dessert which they always served to strangers ;
and that he behoved to choose one of the poignards to fight
against the one who should be deputed by the company to
70
attack him. The King did not lose his presence of mind.
He seized quickly the two poignards with both his hands,
buried them in the hearts of the two robbers who were sitting
on each side of him, running like lightning to the mouth of
the cave, and escaped their pursuit by the darkness of the
night. The King caused seize this troop of assassins next
day in the morning, and made them all be hanged.
I entered a small way in advance in this cavern, and laid
myself down upon the earth, where I slept about an hour, till
all of a sudden I was awakened by a noise the most horrible
and terrific that I had ever heard. I doubted at first of the
fidelity of Salmon, in spite of the very favourable opinions I
had formed of him, fearing that it was a detachment of sol-
diers which he had sent to make me prisoner. I ensconced
myself in the depths of the cavern with a pistol presented in
each hand, advancing always until I should find myself cased
up against the wall, the better to defend myself. Having
remained for some moments in this attitude, I prepared to
defend myself or to be killed rather than to be made prisoner.
I listened at the same time to the noise with attention, and I
was soon quickly convinced by the velocity of the movement
of the object which created this hubbub, that it could not be
from men, and that was all that I then cared for. For some
time the object was close to my ears to affright me, and the
instant after in the distance with a swiftness and rapidity
incredible in its march. Thus I ceased to listen further to this
horrible phenomenon, of which I could comprehend nothing,
which made a racket and noise very like that of trumpets,
and in short a combination of different sounds which was to
me altogether unknown. I approached to the entrance of the
cave, without having any inclination to sleep more.
As soon as the day began to clear at a distance, I fixed
my eyes upon the sea, to bring to my view the boats which
were fishing a quarter of a league from the shore, and as
soon as I saw them enter the harbour of Wemyss, I then de-
71
cended from the cavern, and followed with exactitude the
instructions which Salmon had given me.
The boat, to my misfortune, had made a very bad fishing,
and Salmon had been forced by his partners to sell their fish
to another boat, they having so few that it was not worth
while to go to Leith to sell them. I asked them if they would
grant me a passage to go to Leith for payment. Salmon
answered me immediately " most willingly ; " and he went up
to his partners in order to arrange about it among them-
selves. They all agreed to it in consideration of a crown of
three " livres " for my passage, and I had inconceivable joy
at it. At the moment that we were agreed, and that I was
going to embark, Salmon's wife arrived cursing and swear-
ing " that she would not allow her husband to go to Leith
to-day, where he had no business, his boat having sold all his
fish, above all with a stranger ; and that there appeared some-
thing mysterious in it which she could not comprehend."
What a dreadful misfortune for me ! I swore and railed to
myself against this wicked fish-woman ; but this did not
further me a bit ; and Salmon, who was the weakest party,
was obliged to submit himself to the will of his wife. I had
the prudence not to mix myself up with their dispute, fearing
from the suspicions she seemed to show that she had
been able to understand our conversation in the night, while
we were in drinking the beer, not knowing that Salmon was
married, and that his wife was sleeping in the chamber even
where we were. I desisted with a good grace, and with an
air of indifference. Salmon proposed to me to drink a bottle
of beer together. I consented to it ; and in going up the
stair, he slipt into my hand the guinea which I had given him
on leaving his house, whispering into my ear " You see, Sir,
that I am not master. I wish you, with all my heart, the
happiness of saving yourself ; and I am sorry at not having it
in my power to contribute to it." I admired the honesty of
Salmon ; for not only could he have kept the guinea by in-
72
forming against me, and have had my purse and watch, but
he would have had a considerable reward given him by the
Government for every rebel that he might make prisoner.
This generous conduct was so much the more to be praised,
that he was an enemy of the House of Stuart, and that he
did not know me. Humanity alone, and a noble spirit, made
him act with elevated sentiments above his condition. j
I was not inclined to return directly to the house of Mrs.
Lillie's mother, this wicked fish-wife having expressed her sus-
picions of me before every one. I was afraid of being fol-
lowed. I took the long route along the seaside to return to the
cavern, and when I was opposite the entry, looking around me
on every side, and seeing nobody, I proceeded quickly inside.
I had an extreme curiosity to find out the cause of the terrible
uproar which had given me such uneasiness in the night, of
which I could form no idea. I advanced thirty or forty
paces in the darkness, having lost even the sight of the mouth
of the cave, and the great noise commenced immediately the
same as before ; but when I clapped my hands, and cried
with all my strength, it increased a thousand times more, and
astounded my ears completely. I perceived even the outline
of the rapid movement of those unknown objects which con-
stantly approached nearer to me as if they would .attack me.
I returned back as far as I was able to see the entrance of the
cavern, and redoubled my cries and clapping of hands ; I saw
depart in the end, owls and other innumerable birds of prey.
The frightful noise of these animals could not be compared to
any sound I had ever heard, their cries and flapping of wings
in flying were confounded together by the echo of the cavern,
and made but the same kind of noise, which pierced my ears ;
and the impetuosity of their flight resembled the raging of a
storm. If I had not examined to the bottom, with coolness,
the cause of an effect so singular, I never could have known
to what to attribute it, and doubt not that an anchorite saint,
had he been in my place, would have found supernatural mir-
73
acles, in this adventure, and would have made romantic stories,
as good St. Anthony, for enthusiasm is always closely allied
to credulity and childishness. I sought quietly to discover
something of which I had no idea what it was, and which I
did not comprehend ; comparing with attention all the cir-
cumstances, preparing to defend myself with my pistols if it
was any ferocious animal ; but I recollected in a moment that
men are the most wicked and mischievous of all animals.
I returned to the house of the mother of Mrs. Lillie, after
having remained for about half an-hour in the cavern, and I
recounted to her my distresses that an opportunity, the most
favourable in the world, for crossing the Firth, and which
had all the appearance of being successful, had failed me by
the wickedness of Salmon's wife, after my arrangements were
taken with her husband ; and I prayed her with earnestness
to procure me some one who would pass me over at once, at
whatever price it might be, I would not grudge the money.
She immediately introduced into my chamber a man, without
warning me otherwise than by telling me that he was an
Officer of the Customs in the service of King George. I be-
lieved that her head was turned, or that she wished to betray
me ; but I was still more astonished and stupefied when she
began to relate to him that I was with Prince Edward. This
man, perceiving my uneasiness, told me not to be alarmed,
that he had been in the same case as myself in 1715 ; that,
having lost his effects, he was reduced to the fatal necessity
of gaining his bread to accept this vile employment in the
service of the usurper ; but that his attachment and good wishes
for the welfare of the House of Stuart were always the same.
Relieved of my alarms, I asked of him if he could not
recommend me to some honest man who would take me
across the Firth, and that I would give him such remu-
neration as he could wish. He replied that there was one
named David Cousselnaine, sacrist of the assembly of non-
jurors in the village of Wemyss, a very honest man, and
very zealous to render service to all those who were of the
party of Prince Edward, that I could not do better than
address myself to him. He went out immediately to seek
him, and returned in a moment with him. Cousselnaine said
to me that he would take very willingly an oar, if he could
find any other one that would join him ; and he proposed to
conduct me to the house of Mr. Robertson, at the village of
Dubbyside, which is half a-league from Wemyss, to borrow
his boat : he told me that ^Mr. Robertson was secretly on the
side of the Prince, and that he would lend himself to all that
I could desire.
We parted instantly for Dubbyside, Cousselnaine pre-
ceding me, as there were two bad villages in our way to
cross ; in case any one should wish to examine me, I desired
that they should call me John Cousselnaine, a handloom
weaver, the name and trade of his brother, whom no one
knew in these villages ; and if any one suspected me for
a rebel, he should claim me and maintain against all that I
was veritably his brother. I dreaded my new trade of wea-
ver ! Being only a servant, it was easy to play the part as
I had done in the service of Mrs. Menzies and Samuel ; but
if any one should arrest me on suspicion, and should want to
try me to work at my trade, I should be discovered immedia-
tely, and lost without resource. In the meantime, there was
no trade that suited me better on this occasion. Mr. Robert-
son laughingly said that he would not lend me his boat, but
that he would permit, with all his heart, Cousselnaine to un-
loose her whenever I should find any one to assist me in cros-
sing the Firth ; for as to him he did not know a single person
at Dubbyside whom they could trust. He advised me to go
and see M. Seton, a gentleman staying at Dubbyside, who had
his oldest son in our army. I did not know the father, but I
had contracted a friendship with the son. I was ignorant
that his paternal house was at Dubbyside, and was charmed
at the discovery.
75
Having found M. Seton at home, I told him my name,
and renewed my friendship with his son. He made me enter
on the instant into the public hall, where he tortured me to
death by a thousand questions of which I understood nothing,
and by incoherent proposals, receiving me very coldly, with-
out my being able to divine the cause. After keeping me
impatient during half an hour, all at once his son entered the
saloon, and leapt upon my neck to embrace me. He told me
that they had taken me for a spy sent to their house to take
him prisoner ; and although he had, for half an-hour that he
had scrutinized me through a hole across the partition of the
room, it was only that instant that he had been able to recog-
nize me in my disguise. I was very glad to see Seton again,
the more so that I was ignorant of his fate since the Battle
of Culloden ; and the pleasure of our meeting was reciprocal.
There is always friendship between persons engaged in the
same misfortunes. He invited me to stay with him at his
father's, and his offer gave me pleasure, as I was likely at
Dubbyside to find an opportunity of crossing the Firth.
I went a little after mid-day to Wemyss, promising myself
to see the mother of Mrs. Lillie, always hoping that she would
discover some one sufficiently humane to join himself to Con-
selnaine ; but after a sojourn of eight days at the house of
my friend, without being more advanced than the first day of
my arrival there, we had a sharp alarm, which interrupted
the pleasures which I was beginning to taste in the society
of the very amiable family of M. Seton. Miss Seton having
asked at a fishwife while she was selling her fish at the door
of the house if she had any news, the fishwoman answered
her, that it was reported among other things that a rebel was
prowling about every day along the coast as far as the village
of Wemyss, and that he offered lots of money to the fishers
to give him a passage across : she added that they would be
able very easily to lay hold of him some day in his courses.
One may imagine how much I was annoyed at this news,
76
more especially when they might have been able to have fol-
lowed me to the house of M. Seton without my being able to
have perceived them. As there was everything to fear that
the house of M. Seton might be visited at the next moment,
Seton, my companion in misfortune, decided himself to quit
the house of his father the same evening, to take refuge
at the house of some friend, and I myself also to return to
Lillie's ; but I was determined to make a final effort before
quitting Dubbyside, to cross the Firth that night. I sent to
seek out Cousselnaine, who came to me immediately and told
me that, in spite of all the persuasions possible, he was unable
to find any person who would undertake it. What a deplor-
able situation ! To be so near Edinburgh, where centred all
my wishes of being able to get there, but upon the point of
being obliged to remove myself farther, to bury myself in
the fields, abandoning the hope of passing so soon the Firth.
The reflection of retreating, in place of advancing, agitated
my mind cruelly, and plunged me into an unsupportable
chagrin.
M. Seton, the younger brother of my friend, a young man
of eighteen years, who had made several voyages to sea, see-
ing my distress and touched with my situation, offered gene-
rously to take an oar with Cousselnaine to cross the Firth,
which from Dubbyside to Leith is about three leagues broad.
I received the obliging offer with thanks, and in the mean-
time with the good intention of profiting by it, my position
excluding ceremonies, all his family set themselves imme-
diately after him to fortify his good and generous resolution,
and we agreed to depart about nine o'clock in the evening.
All seemed to bid fair, and the passage of the Firth, which
had cost me pains and sighs, then appeared to me certain.
How fortune sports itself continually by throwing obstacles in
the way of it! The noise which Seton and Cousselnaine
made by launching the boat into the water, alarmed the
inhabitants of the village who were not yet gone to bed. The
77
cry spread amongst them immediately that it was a rebel who
wished to save himself, and Seton and Cousselnaine were very
very fortunate to escape the hubbub, without being known.
I was furious on understanding this vexatious mishap. I
durst say nothing to Seton, as it was by an effort of goodness
on his part that he had moved in my favour, but I redoubled
all my rage on Cousselnaine. I reproached him sharply for his
folly and stupidity in having made a noise in launching the
boat into the water, and I scolded him like a nigger. In the
meantime, notwithstanding this unlucky occurrence, I was
quite decided to continue my enterprise, determined to be
present to command myself the manoeuvre, and by a fortu-
nate stubborness, the more they represented to me the ob-
stacles for that evening, the more determined I was to make
another attempt. M. Seton and all his family entreated me
with clasped hands to defer it till next day, alleging that the in-
habitants being alarmed would be on the watch all the night
and that it was morally impossible it could succeed. I replied
that it was useless to speak to me of it, my resolution being
taken most decidedly. The more certainly that I might take
the passage this night, I embarked along with an oar in each
hand, committing myself thus to Providence, and I would
undertake it however extravagant was the prospect, so much
was I intent on leaving, provoked at not having been able to
find one single honest man among the fishers to join Coussel-
naine to save my life, and withouj^auy prospect of succeeding
better in it in the end. //
An unshaken firmness in my resolutions was always very
useful to me. I made many reflections before determining
on the course I should choose, examining impartially the pros
and cons of all that ought naturally to result from them, but
once decided no person was ever able to make me waver in
my resolutions, even in those cases in which there was no
other alternative but either to succeed or perish, and al-
though every one should be against my opinion, in which I
78
always was well founded. Obstinacy becomes a fault in
general of character, notwithstanding every one's right to
comprehend his own affairs better than any one else, and
being the principal interested, the mind works and exercises
itself to most advantage to discover the resources, thus if one
is endowed with good sense and discernment one conducts
his own affairs himself better than by the counsels of others,
who do not avail themselves of their doubts which render us
wavering in our opinions, and make us often deviate from
the right. I warned Cousselnaine to hold himself ready by
ten o'clock, wishing still to make an attempt,* and I gave him
some money to buy refreshments of which he would have
need in crossing.
Cousselnaine returned at the exact hour, but so intoxi-
cated, that with difficulty was he able to hold his feet, having
well employed an hour all the more that he was absent.
Everything was against me. I swore, I blustered, but I
gained nothing by it. I replied to all the repeated solici-
tations that they made me to desist, that Cousselnaine being
necessary to bring back the boat, he should sleep, and so con-
duct himself during the crossing, while that I sailed with M.
Seton, and that that would be all the inconvenience ; that I
should depart that night most decidedly. I took Coussel-
naine on my back and laid him down all his length in the
bottom of the boat ; I launched the boat into the water with
the assistance of M. Seton without making any noise, and at
length, each taking an oar, we set ourselves to row with all our
strength. As soon as we were distant about fifty paces from
* It fares better that one is quick and. precipitate than frightened ;
for fortune is a lady, says Machiaveli, whom one ought to brand and
keep in subjection ; aud it is seen every day that she allows herself to be
governed by those who are quick and assiduous rather than by those who
are cold and phlegmatic in their movements ; therefore, as a lady, she is
always loved by those who are young; because, being less circumspect,
they attack her with more safety and boldness. Chapter xxv., page 234,
Edition de Londres, en Anylais.
79
the land, not to be more plagued by the inhabitants, I began
then to breathe, and feel my heart rebound as if it had been
relieved of a great burden.
There arose an east wind which agitated the sea greatly,
and our little boat danced horribly. Seton was in great
terror, and it was well-founded, for a wave breaking over the
boat would have filled it with water sufficient to cause it to
sink to the bottom. I always encouraged him ; though in
any other situation I would have been as much in terror as
he was, as we were at every billow in the greatest danger
of being engulphed. But I then feared nothing but the scaf-
fold, and any other peril could not make upon me a strong
impression. We were still in danger, to encounter besides
the wind and the waves, the drunken Cousselnaine extended
in the bottom of the boat, wishing at every moment to rise,
wanting to return ; and we were obliged, to make him remain
quiet, to tie his feet together, and to threaten to throw him
into the sea at the least movement he should make further,
the only means to make him understand reason. Seton and
I having rowed like galley slaves, we landed happily on a
coast towards six o'clock in the morning, a league and a half
east from Edinburgh. The Firth widening in proportion as
you advance to the east, the passage which we made was
from four to five leagues. I embraced tenderly the young
Seton, and thanked him heartily for the essential services
which he had rendered me ; and I gave to Cousselnaine, who
began somewhat to come to himself, a gratification much
beyond his expectations. They re-embarked immediately to
return to Dubbyside, while I quickly hastened at a distance
from the sea-shore, fearing that some countryman might see
me set foot on land. I do not believe that any one could
enjoy a more perfect felicity than that which I experienced
on my landing, having then surmounted the most formidable
obstacles to my escape ; above all, the passage of both arms
of the sea, which had cost me so many pains, anxieties, and
80
sighs, to be able to clear them by the crosses which I there
continually encountered. Actually I found myself within
reach of succour, and the aid of my parents and friends.
Notwithstanding, it was not without many pains and diffi-
culties that I had arrived at that goal. I had my hands
almost in the same state as were my feet ten days before,
bleeding much, and prodigiously inflamed ; but I consoled
myself easily to be for some time disabled in my hands, not
having so much use for them then as for my feet, which
began to be pretty well restored. Having landed at a place
within gunshot of the field of battle of Gladsrnuir, (Preston-
pans), where we gained that brilliant victory over the English
army, and not daring to approach Edinburgh till towards
nightfall, I determined to pass the whole interval upon the
field of battle, in order to tranquilise my mind, and soften a
little the rigours of our lot by reflections on the past. One
enjoys agreeable objects ; the sorrowful are to be reflected
on, the happy man reasons little. It is only him that suffers
who meditates to find at least useful recollections in the evils
which surround him. Misfortune, the great master of men,
renders them more prudent and wiser. Adversity chills the
spirit ; the repeated shocks of misfortune oblige even frivolity
to reflect. Travelling the whole day on the field of battle,
this place presented to me a very striking example of the
vicissitudes of fortune to which human nature is liable ; and
I compared my situation then, in that glorious campaign
executing the functions of aide-de-camp to the Prince, carry-
ing through all his orders^ charged with three hundred
English prisoners, with my condition since, covered with
rags to save me from the scaffold ; overwhelmed with pains
and misery ; happy only in the hope of escaping into some
foreign country, abandoning for ever my native land, my
friends, and my parents ; uncertain in what State I might
find an asylum, or where I might obtain the means of subsis-
tence. What a different lot ! I thought that Providence had
81
led me to land upon the fields of Gladsmuir (Prestonpans),
having been driven to the east by the ebbing tide, rather than
in the neighbourhood of Leith, where we had the intention of
landing, in order to impress vividly on my mind lessons
which would never be effaced. How I desired to see at that
moment some of the favourites of the Prince, whose distin-
guished favour had rendered them insolent, proud, and im-
pertinent ! I imagined I saw those vile, low, and fawning
reptiles in the charge of our affairs. I have seen them since,
and I was not deceived in my conjectures of them, finding
them such as I had believed.* How important it is for man
through the instability of fortune to preserve an equal char-
acter ; not to be elated in prosperity, and always to conduct
himself with modesty and humility are the sure means not
to be cast down, nor to become mean in adversity. Pride
and vanity indicate infallibly a littleness of soul, never failing
in the reverses of fortune to degenerate into outrageous mean-
ness ; but a modest man, mild, honest, and well-doing, will
never be in that situation, whatever revulsion is possible to
occur in his fortune ; and from whatever elevation from
which he may fall, his fall will be lightened by the esteem
and general regret of people of sensibility ; and having the
* Tf we reflect upon the miserable state of man, it appears to me that we
shall know little that he has of which to be proud and insolent. "Not to
make mention," says Wollaston, "of evils, hunger, thirst, heat, cold, the indis-
positions to which the constitutions of the universe renders us subject, one
generation falls as a dead leaf, another remains to fall in the same manner,
and to be for ever forgotten. As we issue forth from the midst of the griefs
of our mothers, we are immediately after hunted by those of our own. In-
fancy and youth glide away in insensibility, in trifles, and in vanity or in
ignorance. If a man arrives at last to old age, over a thousand cares, a
thousand fatigues, and a thousand different adventures, he then feels that
all his inconveniences are augmented, and he finds himself less able to sup-
port them, &c. In the meantime his wants and infirmities rush in crowds,
and under this new accumulation he becomes melancholy, blind, tottering,
bowed down till from this he makes in the end some false steps, which sends
him to the tomb, where he remains insensible to decay and weakness."
Outline of Natural Religion, Edition in 4to, Page 344.
F
82
public voice in his favour, he is happy, he sees the whole
world rejoicing in his good fortune, and in his misfortune
every one running to solace him ; and disgrace is honour-
able for him who brings along with him the regrets of a
nation whom he has faithfully served. Moderation of con-
duct is a virtue which has its source in tranquillity of mind.
When one represses the fierceness of the passions, when one
accustoms one's self to look in the face coolly all the accidents
of life, when one keeps one's self always on his guard against
every troublesome impression, when he gives himself leisure
to weigh everything, to balance everything, he will enjoy
that tranquillity of mind of which moderation in all things
will be the fruit. A man of true merit will see with the
same eyes his rise and his fall, immovable in adversity as a
rock battered by all the fury of the waves in a tempest.
In perambulating these places, I recalled at every step all
the particulars of the battle ; and when I found myself at the
place where I had seen three hundred English soldiers pri-
soners, guarded by twenty-four Highlanders, I sat myself
down to dine upon my bread and cheese, with a bottle of
Madeira wine which M. Seton had made me accept of at
parting. The remembrance of the glorious and inconceivable
victory we had gained on those fields added once more to the
extreme pleasure which I felt at having passed the Firth.
As I feared to be recognized if I went straight to Edinburgh,
I decided to seek a refuge at Leith, at the house of my old
governess, Madame Blythe, who was for twenty-three years
in my mother's service, and charged particularly with the
care of me having taken the office of my nurse from the
age of one year. The troubles and the chagrin which I had
continually occasioned her, as much by the dangerous dis-
eases with which my childhood was overwhelmed, as by the
hasty, passionate, and thoughtless character which an only
son is prone to display, served only to call forth more of
her tenderness and affection for me ; as much as if I had
83
been her own child. M. Blythe, captain of a small smug-
gling vessel, who was very rich, found her all to his taste at
fifty years of age. He proposed marriage to her, and the
proposal was too advantageous for Margaret to waver at his
proposition. It was three years since she had gone to live at
Leith with her husband, and they lived together in much
harmony. Blythe was a Calvinist, an outrageous enemy to
the House of Stuart, but too honest a man to have anything
to fear at his house, so I quitted the field of Gladsmuir
(Prestonpans), before the sun went down, to arrive at his
house before the night should close in. On entering the
house of Madame Blythe, I believed that this good woman
would have smothered me with caresses. She leapt upon
my neck, took me in her arms, and shed a torrent of tears
of joy. As no one of my family knew that I was arrived,
or whether I was dead or alive, or killed at the Battle of
Culloden my brother-in-law, Rollo, having kept them in
ignorance that he had seen me at Banff as soon as the first
transports of this good woman were past, I beseeched her
most instantly to go quickly to Edinburgh to inform my
father and mother that I was in her house in perfect health.
I had as much impatience to give them my news, as Madame
Blythe would have to relieve their anxieties and pains by their
knowledge that I was safe. During her absence, M. Blythe
showed me all the concealments which he had caused to be
made in the partition of his chamber for putting there in his
contraband goods which he obtained in his voyages to distant
countries ; " in short," he said to me, " to put you in there in
case of a surprise, and when any one comes to search my
house." I answered him that I was become the most contra-
band and the most dangerous goods he had ever had in his
house, and that these concealments might very well not be
any longer useless, although he had reckoned for a long time
not to have any more need of them.
My impatience to give my father my news had made me
84
forget to tell Madame Blythe to bring me clothes ; but I had
the joy and satisfaction of seeing her return, to find that she
was charged with all that was necessary for me. In fact it
was time to lay aside my tatterdemalions ; for, besides other
inconveniences that I sustained from my disguise, I perceived
that these habits had given me torture. But as that vile
disease had not made further progress, I was relieved of it at
the end of twenty-four hours, by rubbing all my body with
fresh butter and brimstone, and taking flowers of sulphur
inwardly. These beggarly garments had been very useful to
me for about six weeks that I had worn them : in the mean-
time I had an inconceivable pleasure in discarding them, and
at not being obliged any longer to disguise myself in rags.
My father sent me word that he would come the next morn-
ing to pass the day with me.
Although I desired earnestly to embrace my father, not
having seen him since the month of October that our army
left Edinburgh to enter England, I dreaded, nevertheless, his
presence, on account of the reproaches which he might make
me on account of having joined Prince Edward without his
consent, and for being involved by my own fault in the miser-
able plight into which I was plunged. As soon as it was
known at Edinburgh that the Prince had landed in the High-
lands of Scotland, impressed with having the merit of being
among the first that should place themselves under his orders,
and who should attach their fortunes to his, I beseeched him
with clasped hands to grant me permission to depart im-
mediately to join him. But, far from agreeing to it, he
ordered me expressly not to think of it, telling me that it
would be time enough to join the Prince when he should be
in possession of Edinburgh ; that not being able to procure
passports, his principles and attachment to the House of
Stuart being known to all the world, I would expose myself
to be arrested on presenting myself to cross the Firth, and be
kept in prison during the whole expedition of the Prince. It
85
was without effect that I represented to him that the Prince
would regard me more favourably by attaching myself to his
lot at the commencement of his enterprise, not having more
than some hundred men in his suite, than when these formid-
able obstacles were past, and not having more to do but be
crowned when he should be in possession of the capital of his
ancient kingdom of Scotland. In effect, I looked him in the
face as to this, but I was grossly deceived. My father would
not allow himself to bend, and in the end imposed silence
upon me. Burning with desire to depart, I went next day to
dinner at my Lady Jean Douglas's, sister to the Duke of
Douglas, who had always been my protectress in my infancy,
expressly for the purpose of recounting to her my grievances,
and the conversation which I had had with my father. This
worthy lady approved of my reasons, counselling that I
should depart immediately without consulting my father any
more, and undertaking to appease him in case he should be
in a rage at my disobedience. This was all that I could de-
sire, entirely conforming to my wishes, and I went off next
day in the morning without saying anything to any one. I
found no difficulty in passing the Firth between Queensferry
and Dunfermline; having put a black cockade in my hat,
I entered briskly into the wherry, with an air of authority,
saying to those who examined the passports that I was an
officer of the Regiment of Lee, then in quarters at Edinburgh,
and that officers had no need of passports. On leaving the
boat I took the road to the castle of my Lord Rollo, where I
remained for two days, waiting his arrival from Perth, which
is twelve miles from it. When I reappeared at Edinburgh,
some time after with our army, my father said nothing to me
for having departed without his consent, but then we were
victorious and triumphant ! Presently all had changed face,
and those who had loaded us with praises in our prosperity
treated us in our disasters as rash young men. It is the cus-
tom of the greatest part of the world not to judge of things
86
but by their success. If we had been successful in placing
the crown on the head of Prince Edward, as there was even
a great probability during some time of doing so, by conduct-
ing ourselves well after our victories, we would have all been
celebrated in heroics. The loss of the Battle of Culloden,
which ended the dispute between the Houses of Stuart and
Hanover, rendered us immediately rebels and fools in the
eyes of those who do not reflect, of which, unfortunately,
that is the majority.
My father came, but the good old man in place of abusing
me was so much affected by seeing me again that the tears
rushed at once into his eyes, and clasping me in his arms, he
was some time without being able to speak. As soon as we
both were somewhat composed after this scene of mutual ten-
derness, I amused him with a recital of all the particulars of
our expedition since our departure from Edinburgh to enter
England, and of all that had happened to myself personally
since the Battle of Culloden. He kept me company till nine
o'clock at night, and the time passed as if it had been lightning.
I was penetrated with affliction on learning that my mother
was very unwell, and that she had kept her chamber for a
long time ; and I was still more so when Madame Blythe told
me that it was anxiety on my account which was the cause
of her illness, and that the physicians considered her in
danger. My grief was deep and natural ! She had always
adored me with the affection of the most tender of mothers.
I proposed to my father many plans for going to see her, but
he forbade me to think of it, telling me that I ran the risk of
being recognised, and that if, unfortunately, they should
make me a prisoner, I should cause them both to die of grief ;
so I did not insist further at that time. What a cruel
situation ! to be so near my mother whom I had cause to love
most tenderly, and not to have it in my power to embrace
her!
Leith , which is a mile from Edinburgh, being then full of
87
troops of the Hessians and English Regiments who waited
there to embark on their return to Flanders, two English
Serjeants came to the house of M. Blythe with billets for
lodgings. This was a most terrible disarrangement for me !
Meantime, M. Blythe fortunately found means to exempt us,
and they went off. During an hour that these Serjeants re-
mained in the house to battle with Blythe to lodge them
there, I was acting as sentinel to observe them through a hole
which I had pierced across the partition which divided the
rooms, with the door of the hiding place open, to allow me to
rush into it, in case that I should see that it was their design
to search the house for rebels. I perceived poor Madame
Blythe changing colour at every instant, trembling as in a
fever, and I feared greatly that her anxieties might create
suspicion to the Serjeants that she had some rebel concealed
in her house, but I was relieved from fear, y
They came to inform me that Lady Jean Douglas was
coming to see me incognito the next day after mid-day, ac-
companied by M. Stuart, her husband, who was in her suite,
and another lady of my family.* This worthy and virtuous
* M. the Duke of Douglas, brother of my Lady Jean Douglas, is one of
the most ancient and illustrious houses of Europe, and who have disputed
during many ages the Crown of Scotland against the House of Stuart.
John Baliol had two daughters, the eldest of whom was married to the Earl
of Douglas, and the other to Robert the Bruce, one of the greatest men that
Scotland ever produced, and who delivered his country when the English
had almost entirely made a conquest of that kingdom. Robert the Bruce
succeeded to the Crown of Scotland at the death of John Baliol, in pre-
ference to the House of Douglas, one does not know why, and he had only
one daughter, who was married to the Steward of Scotland, which signifies,
in the Scottish language, Stuart, who succeeded by his wife to the kingdom
of Robert de Bruce. The House of Stuart was but little known in the
History of Scotland previously to this epoch, which saw them all at once
sovereigns. The House of Douglas always disputed their right to the
throne, and William ths Eighth Earl of Douglas, having more than half the
kingdom on his side by a confederation which he had formed against James
II., this King demanded an interview with him in the Castle of Stirling,
and sent Earl Douglas a safe conduct. The Earl, too credulous, confiding
in the promises of the King, and under the safe conduct which he had
88
lady, Lady Jean Douglas, was the idol of her country, endowed
with all the good and amiable qualities that could adorn her
sex. She was loved, respected, and adored by all that had
the advantage of knowing her, and was equally so by the
received from James II., passed and sealed by the great Seals of the
Realm, exposed himself by going to visit the King in the Castle of Stirling,
where he then resided. The king having pressed the Earl of Douglas to
break the bond without his being willing to consent to it, drew his poinard
and said to him, " If you do not choose to do it, this shall break it," plung-
ing at the same time his dagger into the heart of the Earl of Douglas.
The vassals of the Earl running to arms, and dragging at the tail of a horse,
the safe conduct which the King had given him and violated, they burned
the town of Stirling, and threatened to besiege the Castle where the King
was. The King and the new Earl of Douglas encountered each other at
Aberdeen at the head of their armies ; this Earl of Douglas having a greatly
superior army in number and valour to that of the King. "Thus," says
Robertson in his history of Mary Stuart, from which I take this note, "one
single battle ought to have decided whether the Stuarts or the Douglasses
should possess the Crown of Scotland ; but while the troops of the Earl of
Douglas waited with impatience the signal to engage, the Earl ordered them
to retreat. The army of the Earl of Douglas dispersed themselves that
night. Convinced of his want of skill to profit by an opportunity, or his
want of courage to seize [a Crown, the Earl, despised by everybody, was
chased out of the kingdom, and this House, which had been so long the
rival and terror of the Crown, strengthened for some time the King. " The
Duke of Douglas and Lady Jean Douglas were the descendants of John
Baliol by his daughter. The archives of this illustrious house prove their
descent from Sholto Douglas, the founder of that house, who received from
Solvothius, King of Scotland, in 770 the Earldom of Douglas, in recompense
for his valour and his success in the war which Solvothius had to wage
against Donald, King of the Isles.
I have some drops of Eoyal blood in my veins through the House of
Douglas, my grandmother having been the daughter by lawful wedlock of
Douglas, Baron of Whittingeme, a branch of the House of the Duke of
Douglas ; and since that the branch of Whittingeme is sprung from the
House of Douglas, one of the ancestors of my grand -uncle, Douglas of Whit-
tingeme, was married to Annabel Stuart, sister of James I., King of Scot-
land ; and my grandmother was descended from that Annabel Stuart by
lawful wedlock. My father gave me, when parting, a genealogy of this
family, which was taken from the Registers of Scotland, and signed by the
Chancellor for my grand-uncle, William, Baron of Whittingeme, Lieutenant-
General in the service of Gustavus Adolphus, which I have still preserved.
89
public, who did not know her but as one of the finest characters
and good reputations that ever a woman possessed. She had
been in her youth very beautiful, and she still was so at forty-
five years of age, concealing at least five years of her age by the
uniform, temperate, regular, frugal, and simple life she had
always led. She was virtuous, pious, devout, charitable, with-
out ostentation ; and her devotion never was affected nor
obtrusive ; her affability, her easy politeness, her goodness,
her engaging, genteel, and prepossessing manners, effaced in
an instant the embarrassment of those who paid their court to
her, whom her air, full of grace and dignity, had affected and
rendered timid. She had a mind much adorned with litera-
ture, loved reading with a decided taste, having a great me-
mory, much good sense aad spirit, a sound judgment, and a
nice discernment, quick and solid. Her library was full of all
the best authors. You would not see in it the trash of
romances with which the libraries of females are ordinarily
filled. She had a soul elevated and noble, lofty and deter-
mined on occasions when it was proper to be so, and sup-
porting the dignity of her illustrious birth without pride,
without vanity, but in a manner truly great.*
The Duke of Douglas, her brother, was lunatic from his
infancy, often committing acts of folly the most terrible. He
killed his stepfather, M. Ker, without having ever had any
quarrel or altercation with him, by passing his sword through
* The Duke of Douglas, in a rage against my Lady Jean Douglas for
having married, in 1746, Mr. Stuart, a plain gentleman, refused to pay her
the interest of her patrimony, and reduced her thereby to the most dis-
agreeable embarrassment. She returned from London in 1752, and having
caused herself to be presented to King George, she did not humble herself to
demand from him a pension. She told him "that her brother having
stopped payment of the interest of her fortune, which was in his hands, His
Majesty, knowing the family, had certainly too much spirit and good sense
not to know what was due to a person of her birth. " The King upon the
instant caused without delay a considerable pension to be conferred upon
my Lady Jean, though he knew that she had been to visit Prince Edward in
his Palace at Edinburgh
90
his body while he was sleeping ; and my Lady Jean having
often escaped being assassinated in these moments of lunacy,
the Marquis of Lothian, their uncle, wished to have him de-
clared legally lunatic, and to put my Lady Jean in possession
of the whole income of his estate, which amounted to four hun-
dred thousand pounds of rent. There would not have been the
least difficulty in doing so, the lunacy of the Duke having
been known to all the world by the melancholy proofs he had
given of it daily ; but my Lady Jean would not for a moment
hear it spoken of, loving rather to live retired upon seven or
eight thousand a year, an income very small for her rank, and
who had the interest of her fortune placed in a fund lost in the
hands of her brother, rather than dishonour him, as well as
his House. If ever virtue was persecuted without ceasing by
Providence, it was in the person of my Lady Jean Douglas, the
most worthy of her sex, adorable for her eminent qualities
and the most perfect modesty to be imitated, whose vexation
at the persecutions of her brother, joined to the death of her
eldest son, whom she loved tenderly, shortened her days at
London, where she died in 175(6), a little time before the death
of the Duke, her brother, and at the moment when she would
have become the heiress of and enjoyed four hundred thousand
pounds a year. I do not exaggerate her character.* All those
* So many references have been made by the Chevalier in these
Memoirs to the Lady Jean Douglas, that it may be interesting to my
readers to know something of her personal history, and I happily have it
in my power to gratify this desire by the following extract from the Red-
Book of Grandtully, in two volumes, by William Fraser, Esq., Edinburgh,
noticed in the Scotsman, June, 1870.
LADY JEAN DOUGLAS.
The story of Lady Jean Douglas forms an interesting episode in the
history of the Stuarts of Murthly. Her marriage with Colonel Stuart,
afterwards head of the House, took place privately in Edinburgh in 1746
the Colonel at that time being fifty, and Lady Jean forty-eight years of
age. The marriage was kept secret till after the birth of twin sons, in
1748, when it was intimated to Lady Jean's brother, the Duke of Douglas.
The Duke was persuaded that the twins were suppositions, arid neither the
91
who had the- happiness of knowing her and her misfortune
regretted her death, said a thousand times more without being
able to paint the rare merit of this adorable lady, as illustrious
as unfortunate, who merited a better fate, and who was taken
from this world at a moment when she was on the eve of a
condition the most happy, by the death of her brother. What
a mystery of Providence, difficult to comprehend ! One might
often say with Brutus, " O virtue ! I have always adored thee
as a true good, but I find thee only a vain shadow." Virtue
earnest appeals of his sister, nor the influence of the Earl of Crawford, and
other of their common friends, could shake his opinion. He withdrew all
support from his sister, her husband was thrown into jail by his creditors,
and she and her children were only saved from starvation by a small
pension granted her by the King (George II). Lady Jean received a severe
shock from the death of one of her sons in 1753 ; and already worn out by
the anxiety caused by pecuniary embarrassments, and distress at the scan-
dalous imputations cast upon her character by her brother, sank into her
grave a few months after. Her old servant and attached friend declared
that she died of a broken heart, and nothing else. The Duke of Douglas,
after her death, saw reason to repent his judgment, and in 1761 executed
an entail of his whole estate in favour of himself and the heirs whomsoever
of his body, whom failing the heirs whomsoever of his father. Upon his
death, Archibald Stuart, the only surviving son of Lady Jean, was served
heir of entail to his uncle, and shortly after obtained a charter from the
Crown, of the estates of Douglas, as heir to his uncle, the Duke of Douglas.
The Duke of Hamilton, who was the nearest heir male of the Duke of
Douglas, brought action of Reduction of the Service of Archibald Stuart,
and the " Great Douglas Cause," after occupying the Court of Session for
several years, was finally decided by it adversely to Stuart. Nothing
daunted, Stuart carried the case to the House of Lords, where he obtained
a reversal of the decision of the Court below, and had the satisfaction of
not only clearing his mother's name from all suspicion, but of acquiring one
of the finest properties in Scotland. Mr. Fraser gives a very interesting
account of the life of Lady Jean, and the subsequent proceedings of her
son, which, if space allowed, would well repay a minute examination. A
curious corroboration of the parentage of Archibald Stuart-Douglas was his
likeness to the Portrait of "Old Grandtully," which Mr. Fraser says made
a great impression on the present proprietor when first introduced to him.
So warmly was the case of Lady Jean Douglas's son taken up by the public
that on the news of his success arriving in Edinburgh "The Inhabitants
spontaneously gave expression to their joy by a general illumination."
does not afford to man a shelter from the scourges of nature
or the injuries of fortune.*
My Lady Jean Douglas came to see me, as she had sent
me word, and she caused me recount to her all my adventures
since the Battle of Culloden. When I was at the commence-
ment of my narration, which related to my sojourn at the
house of Samuel, my dream immediately came into my
memory, which I had almost forgot through the variety of
events which had happened to me since my departure from
Glenprosene ; and struck with the realization of this dream
* Wollaston says "The history of the human race is almost nothing 1
else but a series of sorrowful and frightful events, &c. Among the millions
of men who have suffered extremely, it is impossible to imagine that there
has not been a great number of sorrows and sufferings that have not ex-
ceeded the pleasures which they have enjoyed, without which they would
not have been in a condition to evade by their innocence, by their prudence,
or by any other means the bitter draughts which they have been made to
drink of to the very dregs ; viz., that is to say, that the innocent has the
portion which most properly belongs but to the criminal and unjust ; and
those same share the lot which the innocent naturally ought to have. This
is one of the arguments in proof of the immortality of the Soul." Outline of
Natural Religion, Edition in to, pro. 8, page 344.
It may be interesting also to know that the Portrait of Mary, Queen
of Scots, engraved from an original painting in possession of the Grand-
tully family, represents her in her widow's dress as Queen Dowager of
France, holding in her right hand a Crown and in her left a Crucifix.
We may also mention, as there stated, that the ancestor of Colonel
Stuart, who married Lady Jean Douglas, was Walter Fitzalan, the High
Steward of Scotland, who married Marjory, daughter of King Robert
Bruce, and on the death of her brother, King David II., in 1370, her son
obtained the Crown of Scotland and assumed the title of King Robert the
Second. The Stewards of Grandtully are descended from Alexander, High
Steward of Scotland, fourth in descent from Walter, through his second
son, Sir John Stuart of Bankill, whose grandson was the first of the family
who possessed Grandtully. He married the daughter of John de Ergadia,
Lord of Lorn, and by her had several sons, the eldest of whom married in
the Lorn family ; the second was ancestor of the Earls of Athole, Buchan,
and Traquair ; while the fourth, Alexander, was ancestor of the Stuarts of
Grandtully. (Alexander died about the year 1449).
93
from point to point, and in all its circumstances, I paused for
a moment in my narrative, confounded and stupefied and
mute. I hesitated at first whether I should tell it to my Lady
Jean, but it appeared to me so supernatural and incredible
that I did not dare to make her privy to it, fearing that she
might possibly imagine that I was inclined to impose upon her
fictions, which I had no need to do to secure the goodwill of
one who had honoured me with her kindness from my infancy.
Besides, supposing that she should not believe it, which was
very probable, I thought that this would show a littleness of
soul, endeavouring to catch her or turn her about; so I
resumed my narration. It is certain that this dream saved my
life, by my advancing with obstinacy and determination to
the south, in place of returning to the mountains with my
comrades ; and I shall remember it as long as I shall live
as a thing which I could not comprehend without the. power
of reasoning upon it, and which surpasses my imagination.
This action of the mind during the time that the body is in a
state of insensibility, as if dead, is of itself even inconceiv-
able ; but when we talk in a dream, and when the actions in
sleeping are more than realized in the event, and are verified
to the letter, what can one think of it ? Can it proceed from
a cause purely and simply natural ? The effect is positive,
that my dream saved me from the scaffold I being directed
by the dream as if an angel had traced the route which I ought
to follow, inspiring me with an assurance of arriving at Edin-
burgh, contrary to good sense and the advice of every one, or
of perishing. I have never even recoiled a pace, be it to re-
turn to the house of M. Graham when the boatmen deserted
me, be it to the house of Lillie when the opportunity by Sal-
mon was not afforded, or the house of M. Seton. Precipitated
by I do not know what impulse, without knowing whether it
was for my destruction or for my safety, my mind is plunged
into a labyrinth when I try to comprehend it in so much the
more as I had not thought of my Lady Jean Douglas on the
94
day when we took counsel at the house of Samuel the
unanimous result of which was to return to the Highlands ;
nor for a long time before. I thought no more on going to bed
than to obtain a sound sleep, and to arise at three o'clock in
the morning to depart with my companions. It seemed to me
as if after my dream I was no longer a free agent, and my
reflections all the journey on the difficulties and insur-
mountable obstacles which surrounded me on the road to
Edinburgh served only the more strongly to confirm my
resolution. Above all, supposing me to be arrived at Edin-
burgh, could I ever hope there to see my Lady Jean Douglas,
and that she would come and pay me a visit at the house
of M. Blythe? The whole thing is altogether incompre-
hensible.*
* M. Voltaire says in regard to dreams, " but how is it, all the senses
being dormant in sleep, there is in it a medium which is alive ; how is it
that your eyes seeing nothing, your ears hearing nothing, in the meantime
you both see and hear in your dreams ? The dog is at the chase in a dream,
&c. ; the poet makes verses in sleep ; the mathematician figures, &c. Are-
these the sole organs of the machine which act ? Is it the pure soul which
yielding to the empire of the senses, rejoices in their bonds being at liberty ?
If soul organs produce dreams of the night, why do they not produce ideas
of the day ? If the soul, pure and tranquil in repose of the senses, acts by
itself as the sole cause, the sole subject of all ideas which you have in sleep-
ing, why is it that these ideas are always irregular, unreasonable, and in-
coherent ? You must confess that all your ideas come to you in sleep with-
out you and in spite of you. Your will has no part in them. It is then
certain that you could think for seven or eight hours on end without having
the least desire to think, and without even being sure that you were think-
ing. Ponder this, and endeavour to divine what it is that the animal is com-
posed of." But what could be more inconceivable a dream, accompanied with
such a variety of circumstances, as mine was in the house of Samuel, and
all the particulars of that dream verified to the letter two months afterwards.
The human mind does not know how to penetrate through these clouds, which
conceal all from weak mortals. The fact is true, and happened to me such as
I have related it. Would one seek to apprehend the cause ; it is so en-
shrouded, like millions of other causes of which we are unable to know the
effects ; and the mind is bewildered and plunged into an abyss without
being able to arrive at anything, without being able to penetrate into the
mysteries of nature, where all is to us obscurity and uncertainty ; and one
loses one's self there in reflections.
95
Having told my Lady Jean the adventure of the two ser-
geants the day before, which had so much alarmed poor
Madame Blythe, she replied that I was not safe at the house
of M. Blythe, and she invited me to come to stay at her
house, where I would be in more security, as no one dared
lightly to visit her hotel on mere suspicion, bidding me
come to it that very evening towards six o'clock, and ordering
me to keep on my tatterdemalions during the journey
her hotel being half a-league from Leith to the village of
Drumsheugh, the disguise would be absolutely necessary, for
fear of meeting any one of my acquaintances. I pleaded all
that I could to be allowed to part with my habiliments, which
particularly annoyed me. Meanwhile, not daring to say to my
Lady Jean that they gave me uneasiness, I was still obliged to
wear them to conform to her orders. I took all the precau-
tions possible not to have in the long run this villainous dis-
ease a second time, having put on two shirts, a waistcoat, and
gloves. In spite of the horror I had of these habits, and
which I would have given a great deal to see in flames before
my Lady Jean came to see me, they were the most precious
that I had ever worn, having greatly contributed to the
saving of my life. I arrived at the door of the hotel of my
Lady Jean towards one o'clock in the afternoon, which I
found wide open, and the gardener who attended me the
sole domestic whom she had ventured to let into the secret.
He told me that my Lady had ordered him to conduct me into
her apartment the moment I arrived, and before I changed
my dress she wishing to see me under my disguise. This
was further an annoyance to me, for I feared to infest her
chamber with a bad smell. Nevertheless, it was necessary
that I should submit to it. I found M. Stuart and a lady of
my family at the house of my Lady Jean, who attended to
see my metamorphosis ; they all found me quite unrecognis-
able. My Lady told me that there was nothing wanting for
my adjustment but to have my eyebrows blackened with
96
charcoal. I engaged in it immediately, and in reality this
changed me again considerably. I took leave at midnight,
and was conducted by the gardener to the chamber which
was destined for me, where no person had been lodged for a
long time before, and which was below the summer-house.
I went to work immediately by taking off my tatterdemalions,
habiliments which I begged the gardener to burn in the
garden in order that I might never hear of them any more
spoken of, and have nothing more to fear that it would be
necessary for me to put them on again.
No person in the house of my Lady Jean being aware of
the secret except the gardener, at the same time that they all
knew that nobody lodged in the chamber that I occupied, not
to make any noise, which would have necessarily discovered
me to the domestics, I was obliged not to put on my shoes till
one o'clock in the morning, that they were in bed, and I
then descended to the garden, where I walked till two o'clock
in the morning. I soon accustomed myself to this sedentary
and solitary life, seldom seeing anybody but the gardener,
who brought me my food. Sometimes I had the felicity of
going down to the apartment of my Lady Jean, where I
generally found M. Stuart, to pass a couple of hours at night ;
but this was rarely, on account of the embarrassment and
difficulty of escaping all the domestics, above all her chamber-
maid, Mrs. Ker, who my Lady did not wish should know
the secret, and who came very inopportunely by curiosity
to find out some mystery which she had often occasion
to suspect in the house, but without knowing what to make
of it. I immediately acquired a taste for reading, having had
till then too much dissipation for me to apply myself to it,
and my Lady gave me the best historical authors. Thus I
passed all my time with a book continually in my hand,
without feeling myself an instant alone ; and I would have
consented to pass all my life in the same condition to have
escaped the scaffold. The taste which I then acquired for
97
reading has been very useful to me in the end, and a great
resource against ennui in the countries where I dwelt many
years in America, where society has not the same agreeable-
ness as in Europe.
A few days after I was installed in the House of my Lady
Jean Douglas, I read in the Edinburgh Gazette " That the
populace at Dubby side had arrested and conducted to prison
one named David Cousselnaine, who with another certain
person who saved himself, had aided a rebel to effect his
escape, and that they had burnt the boat which they had used
for crossing the Frith." I was charmed that the poor, gener-
ous Seton had had the good fortune to save himself. I felt
the greatest regret possible that M. Robertson had lost his
boat. But as to Cousselnaine (my hand not being yet whole),
I could not lament so much his fate as I would have done
had he remained sober ; for, but for his debauch, he would
have been able to have returned to Dubbyside at an earlier
hour, and being in a condition to waken us, we would have
made the passage in less time, and to all appearance he
would have avoided being taken, being able to return before
the inhabitants were up. I raved as any one who sought to
save his life, knowing but little of the business, but with
Cousselnaine we would have had more than double the speed.
M. Seton, the elder, whom I met again at Paris in 1747, told
me that Cousselaine was discharged from prison after some
weeks, they not having been able to find any evidence
against him ; and in truth it would have been a great wrong
to have condemned him for having saved a rebel, for the
animal had no part in it, having done nothing but sleep dur-
ing the whole passage, while I was fatigued to death by the
force of rowing, and lamed my hands so as not to be able to
avail myself of them for some time.
My Lady Jean Douglas and my father gave me their ad-
vice that I should go to London, not running the risk of
being known in that great city, where an infinite number of
6
98
strangers arrive and depart every day, nor more than in
the road going there when I should be distant ten leagues
from Edinburgh. All was prepared for my departure,
when we learnt that a squadron of the Duke D'Anville
had left France, and that it was so formidable that Admiral
Anson had not dared to attack it. Nobody in Scotland
doubted at first that this squadron was destined to retrieve
the affairs of Prince Edward, and the secret course which
she took in departing confirmed everybody still more in
this belief. It is not doubted that this squadron would have
been able to effect a landing in Scotland without meeting
there the slightest opposition, and in the face even of the
English troops, who would not have dared to attack them ;
and the troops which were on board would have been more
than sufficient to have retrieved our affairs. The Scotch
still concealed in the Highlands would have rushed like
a hive of bees ; and many of the clans who had remained
neutral, seeing that the Duke of Cumberland had ravaged and
sacked their country, without distinction of friend or foe, the
army of the Prince would have immediately been more than
double the number in the time we were the most numerous ;
our army never having exceeded eight thousand men. After
having waited with extreme impatience the landing of this
squadron in Scotland, which occupied the attention of every-
body for many weeks, in the end an English barque dis-
covered this squadron in a latitude which left no doubt but
that she was destined for America. The fate of this power-
ful fleet was to perish on the coast of Acadia, without ever
effecting an establishment, the object of that armament, at
Chibouctou, a paltry town in a most wretched place, full of
rocks and stones, which has been colonized since by the
English under the name of Halifax. This immense arma-
ment, which would have easily effected a revolution in Eng-
land in the moment of the crisis when we were in Scotland,
was reduced to nothing by tempests, by diseases, by ani-
99
mosities and disorders between the general officers of the sea
and those of the land ; in fine, by a total mismanagement of
conduct; in so much that it is related in France, that very little
of the wreck of this formidable squadron escaped, without
having effected the projected establishment of Chibouctou, and
that the expedition was the last attempt of the French marine.
It is a very bad policy the menaces which they have
used for an age against the English, with respect to the
House of Stuart, and which could not last for ever. This
has been used by so long a practice that the English are no
more alarmed at it, and they will never take advantage of it,
as they see to-day that France, with the best dispositions
possible, is incapable of effecting anything in favour of the
House of Stuart, by the destruction and transmigration of
their Scotch partisans, and by the coldness of those of Eng-
land, and of which we have seen proof in the last war these
pretended invasions not having anything of concert, have not
hindered the English from following all their enterprises ; and
they have not answered any purpose but to open their eyes to
form and discipline a hundred thousand militia to guard their
coasts from surprise. If France had been seriously disposed
to establish the House of Stuart on the throne, she could have
easily accomplished it during our expedition with only three
or four thousand troops : and, moreover, with an ally which
she would have had in Prince Edward, she would have
avoided those eternal wars with England, which would have
never happened during the reign of the House of Stuart ; on
the contrary, they would have seen Charles II. ally himself
with France in making war on Holland, in spite of the good
disposition which the English nation had always entertained
for that republic. The king of England had it in his power
to make these alliances, to declare war or to avoid it when-
ever he pleased, and he was always sure to have the majority
of parliament.
After a sojourn of two months, tranquilly and so philo-
\
100
phically, in the house of my Lady Jean Douglas, one of her
servants, who returned from Edinburgh with provisions, re-
counted in the kitchen to the other domestics, that while she
was purchasing meat at the butcher's, the lackey of an Eng-
lishman, an officer of the customs, whispered in her ear, " that
he knew very well whom she had concealed in the house of
her mistress, Lady Jean Douglas, and that they could easily
go at the first moment to search her hotel." She added that
she had contradicted loudly this calumny. In fact, she could
very well contradict it in good faith there being no one but
the gardener who knew that I was in the house; and he
came up in an instant to acquaint my Lady Jean, who came
on the spur of the moment into my chamber with M. Stuart,
to consult upon that which was to be done, fearing that a de-
tachment of troops might come in the course of the day to
visit her hotel, and it was then but nine o'clock in the
morning.
I was penetrated with sorrow and vexation ; I trembled
with fear, lest the extreme goodness of my Lady Jean in
giving me an asylum at her house might involve her in a bad
affair with the government ; and I would have rather had a
thousand times more distresses, and consequent troubles, than
that should happen to her, she having taken me into her house
as if it had been my own. I expressed to her my regrets for
the risk I had exposed her to. She answered me with her
usual vivacity and promptitude of manner, "My child, if
there were no risk in it, you would be under no obligation for
it." I could not depart by the hall door on account of the
domestics, who would see me from the kitchen ; and having
searched all the house without finding any place where I
could conceal myself, as they were then making hay in a
park belonging to my Lady Jean, M. Stuart proposed to me
to conceal myself in a stack of hay. For this operation it
became necessary to let a lackey into the secret, in order to
remain a sentinel on the other domestics, and for us to em-
101
brace a favourable moment to depart from the house to
enter the park.
I departed in a jacket with the lackey and gardener, and
followed by M. Stuart. As there had to be a great many
precautions to take on account of some windows in the village
which overlooked the park, we commenced to make all the
colls of hay, one after the other ; then the lackey and the
gardener threw themselves, one after the other, on the hay
heaping it upon that which was on the ground. This feint
having lasted some minutes, I threw myself at full length as if
in continuation of the same sport, and they threw over me the
hay till that stack in which I was concealed was built of the
same height as the others, leaving therein only a small open-
ing for me to breathe by ; and they handed to me a bottle of
water, and another of wine, then they retired.
I did not believe that it was possible to suffer more than
I had done throughout the day. It was very fine weather,
but very hot ; and the excessive heat in the stack made me
almost lose my breath, being as in an oven, ready at every
moment to be suffocated. M. Stuart came to see me from
time to time to console me, preaching patience to me. I had
veritably need ; and there were moments that I suffered so
cruelly that I was tempted to throw the hay to the devil, and
expose myself rather to all that could happen ; but considera-
tions alone for my Lady Jean Douglas restrained me. After
the most terrible sufferings from ten o'clock in the morning
till nine at night, always in the same attitude, without the
power to stir, and pouring in sweat, they came at last to
relieve me at night-fall. When I came out of the stack of
hay, I felt my body bruised, and was so weak from the
perspiration that it was with difficulty that I could walk, by
leaning on the arm of M. Stuart. Scarcely could I support
myself on my legs. I was enraged at having passed so ter-
rible and cruel a time to no purpose nobody having come to
visit the house. I was always of opinion that they durst not
102
do so upon such an ill-founded information, and they could
have had none certain and positive but through the gardener,
whose fidelity my Lady Jean had known for the long time
that she had had him in her employment.
In the certainty that the squadron of the Duke d' Anville
was not destined for Scotland, my hopes of re-establishing our
aifairs vanished into smoke ; and my sufferings during all
the time of my being in the stack of hay quite determined me
to depart for London sooner ; and my departure being fixed
for the next day, M. Colville, man of business of my Lady
Jean, brought me next day for my journey on the road a very
fine nag, very much to be relied on. I beseeched my Lady
Jean very earnestly to exempt me from a second penance
in the stack of hay any time that I should have the honour
of again staying at her house, adding that I would have stood
as a sentinel at the windows of my chamber from morning
till evening, with my eyes constantly fixed on the door of
the court ; and as soon as I should have seen a detachment
enter, if they had had the boldness to come into it, I should
have jumped from one of the windows of the first floor to the
garden, and straightway passing over the wall of the garden,
should have been in the open fields, and under shelter from
their pursuit. This dear and amiable lady lamented my
sufferings in the stack of hay, but at the same time burst out
into a great roar of laughter, seeing the terrible panic I was
in for fear of returning into it, and she dispensed with it. It is
true that I had had a rough proof of this terrible punishment.
My father came to bid me an eternal adieu, and remained
with me till after mid-day. I was vividly overwhelmed
with melancholy and affliction at the approach of a separation
for ever. I insisted greatly with him, as well as with my
Lady Jean Douglas, to permit me to go for an instant to Edin-
burgh in order to embrace, for the last time, the most tender of
mothers, in her bed-ridden dangerous disease ; but they would
not consent to it, seeing the danger to which I would expose
103
myself of being recognised, whether in going through the
town, or by the servants of the house. So I was obliged
to submit myself, and not to speak of it any more, although I
would have exposed my life a thousand times to see her
again. Deplorable situation ! To be within a quarter of a
league of a tender sick mother, who had always been dear to
me, and 'not to have it in my power to bid her an eternal
adieu.
I began to disguise myself towards eleven o'clock at
night, as one of those merchants who travel through the
country, and they furnished me with a profusion of handker-
chiefs which I put into my portmanteau with my linens,
where I had likewise the breasts of an embroidered vest,
which was very beautiful, and very precious, being the work
of a lady. Having turned up my hair, I put on a black peri-
wig which floated upon my shoulders, and my Lady Jean
had blackened my moustaches for me ; but in spite of this
disguise I was not so unrecognisable as with my tatterde-
malions. This dear Lady, anxious to know that I was dis-
tant some leagues from Edinburgh without accidents, where
I would not be so exposed to meet my acquaintances as in
the environs of that city, sent her lackey upon her saddle
horse to conduct me the two first leagues, in order to be
informed of my debut.
I made out six leagues x without stopping, finding then a
village in which there was a public house, and I set my foot
to the ground for the purpose of resting myself there, and
having something to eat. The landlady begged me earnestly
to agree to join myself to a gentleman in the other room, who
had just also arrived, so as to dine together. I agreed to it,
suspecting that she had not accommodation to serve us sepa-
rately. I was confounded on entering the room to find M.
Scott, banker, from Edinburgh, a young gentleman, who
knew me very well by sight. This was an encounter the
more perplexing in as much as he was an out and out parti-
104
san of the House of Hanover. The mistake made, there was
no time for me to draw back ; and, sheltering myself under my
disguise, I played the part of the merchant, until in distrac-
tion he pronounced my name. Not being able any longer to
doubt that I was not recognised, I endeavoured to deceive
him as to the road which I was to follow, there being more
roads branching off from this village which fell into the great
road from Edinburgh ; and I said to him that I would go to
sleep all night at Jedburgh. The road to go thither joined
the road to London at this village on turning to the right.
After he had pronounced my name I could remark that he
had an extreme intention to make me believe, in spite of that,
that he did not know me, for which I could not divine his
motive. I did not fear to be taken in the village, having my
pistols, one in each breeches pocket, charged and primed ;
but I doubted greatly that on his arrival in the evening at
Edinburgh he would inform against me to enable them to
write to the magistrates of the different towns on the road to
London with orders to make me prisoner. I departed imme-
diately after I had dined, taking at first the road to Jedburgh,
but after having gone about a league, I found a cross-road
upon my left, which I took, and immediately regained the
road to London. I arrived in the evening at Kelso, which is
eleven leagues from Edinburgh, and I availed myself of a
letter of recommendation of M. Stuart, to sleep at the house
of a burgess, in order to avoid unpleasant rencounters at an
inn. I never passed a journey with so much distress,
plunged in melancholy, overwhelmed and absorbed in reflec-
tions the most cruel. I reduced my lot to the terrible alter-
native either to perish on the scaffold, or to save myself
in some foreign land, never again to revisit my native land,
my parents, my friends whom I had left there, who were
dear to me ; in fine, it was actually an eternal adieu to all.
The next day I entered England.
Amid the immense number of prisoners which we made
105
in the different battles we gained over the English, there
were a great many who enlisted not in good faith, into our
army, the greater part of them only seeking thereby for
means more easily to desert, to rejoin their former troops in
the English army. I had taken from thirty to forty of them
into my company, of which there remained, at the battle
of Culloden, but five or six. The unfortunate Dickson, my
servant, was of this number, and he had the misfortune to be
hung at Edinburgh, during my stay at the house of my Lady
Jean Douglas, dying with all the bravery and fortitude pos-
sible. He refused his pardon, which was offered him by M.
Chapman, his former captain in the 42nd regiment, on con-
dition only that he would confess his fault. The fourteenth
day after my departure, being two miles from Stamford,
where I proposed to pass the night, the sun not being more
than an hour above the horizon, and having made good
thirteen leagues in the journey, in passing some covered
caravans, all at once I heard a voice in one of these caravans
cry out " Look ! look ! see a man on horseback as like our
rebel captain as two drops of water." And he named me at
the same time. These caravans were going also to Stamford.
They told me at the house of my Lady Jean Douglas, that
there had passed, eight days before, caravans full of soldiers,
wounded at the battle of Culloden, to convey them to the
Hospital of Invalids at Chelsea, near London ; but I believed
them too far advanced to be able to find them in my road ;
and not reckoning to encounter in England those gentry who
recognised me again, I had taken off my grand black peri-
wig on account of the excessive heat of the weather, and
having on my turned up hat, which covered my visage as if
for the purpose of protecting me from the sun, I did not
make it appear as if I understood them ; and having passed
these caravans, I always continued at the same pace of my
horse till I had crossed the town of Stamford ; then I set
spurs to my horse, and rode on full eight miles at the gallop,
106
to obtain the advance of these caravans, in order that they
might not see me again. I would have been afraid, by stop-
ping all night at Stamford, of the searches which the magis-
trates would have been able to make on the reports of these
soldiers.
In the meantime this adventure might have made me lose
my horse, which would have reduced me to a situation the
most desolate, the mere idea of which made me tremble.
Arrived at the inn, as soon as he was entered the stable he
lay down without inclining to eat or drink, and he appeared
altogether done up. I tormented my imagination how I could
continue my journey, if he was no longer in a state to travel,
and I had still to dread the arrival next morning of these cara-
vans at the same inn, which was the only one in the village.
Plunged in uneasiness and chagrin, I did nothing else but
come and go continually between the inn and the stable during
two hours ; at the last, after much torment of mind, I was
agreeably surprised to see my horse in the end eating with a
good appetite, and comporting himself to a miracle. The
landlord said to me that I had nothing 1 to fear for him ;
offering at the same time to buy him by giving me three times
more than he had cost me ; reassured also as to the state of
my horse, it was a great deliverance for me to be relieved
from the most cruel perplexity. He added " that in some
hours he would not feel any more his fatigues, and that next
day in the morning I would be able to depart at such hour
as I chose without fearing that he would leave me by the
road. I fixed my departure for half-past two in the
morning, under pretext of evading the heat, but in reality
for getting in advance of these caravans, which had annoyed
me so much.
The next morning at sunrise, as soon as I arrived at the
high-road, a man, well-dressed as a burgess, aged about forty
years, mounted upon a very fine bay courser, came across the
fields, leaping all the hedges and ditches with an astonishing
107
agility, and lie set himself down at my side, entering all at
once into conversation in spite of the little disposition on my
part to hold it, as he might have been able to see by my
manner of answering him always in monosyllables. Having
examined his physiognomy, as he sat on my left, I found in
him a raised and troubled air, turning at every instant his
head to look on every side. In fine, he had all the signs of a
robber, with whom the highways in England were infested.
I put, on the instant, my hand into my breeches pocket, hold-
ing a pistol in my hand cocked, and my eyes always fixed
upon him, determined, upon the least movement which he
might make with his hands, that my pistol should be immedi-
ately as ready as his. I regulated also the pace of my horse
with his, never leaving him behind me, as I perceived that he
had some desire to be, by slackening at every moment his
pace. I did not incline to surrender my purse without a
combat. In my position the loss of my money would have
ruined me without resource, and I did not know how I
should have been able to extricate myself out of such a
serious embarrassment. Having travelled in this manner for
more than half an hour, always upon the qui vive, forming a
thousand broken resolutions, all of a sudden, he wished me
good day, and made himself off at the same time, in the same
fashion in which he had come across the fields, crossing the
hedges and ditches ; and without appearing to have any other
idea in his mind than to get off the highway. Perceiving
the bold countenance which I showed to him, he had given
up making further questions, and I was very glad to see him
depart, for an adventure of that kind might not have failed
to be disastrous to me. If I had knocked him on the head,
defending myself, I could not have presented myself before a
Justice of Peace to make my deposition ; and if he had taken
my purse, I do not know how I should have been able to
continue my journey, without money.
During the time that I was dining at a dirty jockey inn,
108
there entered a man whom I judged by his conversation with
the hostess to be a Custom-house officer. This man set him-
self down abruptly at the table with me, without shewing me
the least politeness or asking my permission. He passed a
quarter of an hour without opening his mouth, making a
considerable breach upon a piece of roast veal. Satiated at
last, he laid down, with gravity, his knife and fork, with an
air content and satisfied. " Sir," said he to me, " I saw you
pass by this morning; apparently you have slept at Stamford.
I perceived by your horse, of which we have none of that race
in England, that you had come from Scotland. Tell me if
it is true that they have entirely dispersed the rebels ? It
must be confessed that your nation sought with ardour its
own destruction ! Have we ever been governed with such
mildness and moderation as we are at present by His Majesty
King George ? Your nation did not choose to remain quiet
till it was totally crushed. Is it ever possible to eradicate
from your nation this hereditary spirit of rebellion ? "
I was uneasy, fearing that this coarse fellow had been sent
by the magistrates of Stamford to try to verify the declaration
of the soldiers ; and not to lose sight of me until they should
find an opportunity to arrest me in the first great inn on the
route where I should pass the night. I answered him "that I
did not know any news of the rebels, having only come from
the province of Annandale, which is on the frontier of Scot-
land close to England, where they were generally altogether
ignorant of what had passed in the north of Scotland ; that
as to the rest, being a pack-merchant I did not occupy
myself but with my merchandise, and troubled myself very
little with affairs of State." He asked immediately to see
my merchandize. I told him that I had sent to London by
sea my cloths and other worsted manufactures, and I had
only with me a few handkerchiefs. I immediately opened
my portmanteau to shew them, and I sold to him a piece
without knowing the price, for they had forgot to mark it on
109
each piece. It is true I had not foreseen these embarrass-
ments in the route to London to oblige me to sell them. In
paying me for this piece of handkerchief he bestowed praises
on my probity, telling me that I was a young man of con-
science, and that all the other Scotch merchants who
travelled daily by the road were real rascals, having made
him pay lately for the same pieces of handkerchiefs nearly
double what I had exacted from him. In searching my port-
manteau, my embroidered vest appeared, and he had a great
desire for it ; but as to it, I told him that it was not in my
power to sell it for less than five guineas. He thought no
more of it, and I was very glad that he did not torment me
more to have my vest, for I would not have given it for all
the things in the world. If this man was sent after me, as I
had suspected him, at least he would have to render an ac-
count that I was a merchant ; and the piece of handkerchief
that I sold him, apparently much cheaper than it had cost
me, gave him a high idea of my probity. He made me take
the addresses of his friends in London, in order that I might
sell them similar pieces at the same price.
I arrived at London at six o'clock in the evening the
seventh day after my departure from the house of my Lady
Jean Douglas, having made a hundred and forty leagues
without too much fatiguing my horse. I set my foot on the
ground at a hotel in Grace Street, which M. Stuart had
recommended to me for honest people ; and I proceeded,
as soon as I had changed my linen, to deliver a letter of re-
commendation to a person from whom all the favour I had to
ask, was to find me a furnished room to hire, where I could
lodge for the moment, in order to avoid the inconvenience of
sleeping at a hotel. Having found him, his excuses surprised
me much, at his not being willing to find me a lodging, at the
same time that he informed me that the keeper of the hotel
being a Scotchman, much suspected by the government, he
feared that the Court employed some of his domestics as
110
spies to give them information of all Scotchmen who might
arrive in London. I returned to the hotel very ill pleased
with the clown, who did not choose to give himself the trouble
to find me a lodging, and very uneasy, after what he had
said, to be obliged to pass the night there. I did not shut
my eyes the whole night with uneasiness, fearing that they
might apprehend me on the information of these spies at the
hotel ; and having risen in the morning, at an early hour, I
went out immediately to seek a lodging, without being able
to find one in that quarter which would accommodate me, on
account of the expense. Impatient and uneasy to depart from
the hotel, I recollected myself all at once of a milliner who
had preferred her friendship for me when I found myself in
London in 1740 ; and the point was to know, if she had sub-
stituted some one in my place, whom she loved better than
me, or if I could rekindle the same flames which I had then
been able to inspire her with, after an absence of five years.
As she had good sense, feeling, and a great sweetness of
character, I was fully persuaded that I would risk nothing in
trusting my life in her hands : so I at once took a hackney
coach and repaired to her house. Having sent back the
hackney coach at some paces from her house, I entered into
her shop under pretext of buying something, imagining that
she would not recognize me ; but as soon as she saw me she
called me by my name, in a transport of joy to see me again.
Her servant being present, I said to her that she had possibly
forgot me, since my name was Leslie. We entered into the
saloon, where I recounted to her my misfortunes, which
brought tears to her eyes ; and I could see very well that this
amiable, good woman yet loved me. I added that the con-
vincing testimonies of her friendship and affection made me
truly believe my life to be in safety in her hands. " Ah ! as
to that, yes," cried she, with vivacity ! She embraced me
immediately, and prayed me to be convinced that she still
loved me as before, and that she had often thought of me.
Ill
She offered me at once a room in her house, telling me that
I should be doubly secure there, as she had never wished to
let her chambers ; and she made me all the entreaties possi-
ble to come and occupy them without tarrying a moment, as
I was exposed to disagreeable accidents in a hotel. I ac-
cepted the obliging offer which she had made me. I went
back to the hotel to fetch my portmanteau, and I returned to
dine at her house, and to enter into possession of a very fine
room on the first floor above ; and having found a stable in
the neighbourhood, at night I moved my horse thither myself,
in order that the people of the hotel, if they were spies of
the Court, might be ignorant of the quarter I had gone to
dwell at. Thus I was then reassured and tranquil on that
account. My horse was so jolly that I sold him at once very
advantageously, and gained from that source much more than
the expense of my journey, with the loss which I had sus-
tained on the piece of handkerchief.
Having remained at London a year, in spring, 1740, I
received an order from my father, in consequence of a dis-
agreement, to return to Scotland, and he only gave me three
weeks to return thither, under the penalty of not pardoning
me again that disobedience. I was at this moment very cri-
tically situated with regard to my father, when, in a visit that
I made to one of my friends to inform him of my depar-
ture, I met at his house with the most beautiful person that
ever lived, aged eighteen years, and who had arrived lately
from the provinces. She was ignorant even of the perfection
of her figure, altogether heavenly, and the power of her
charms. She was the niece of my friend an only daughter.
Her father was of an ancient English house, the youngest
branch of which was very illustrious, with the title of Duke.
I remained to dinner with her at the house of her uncle,
where she staid ; and her engaging manners, her air of sweet-
ness, her conversation full of good sense, spirit, modesty, and
without affectation, all combined with her beauty to captivate
112
me, and to make me feel with violence the torments of a
rising passion. This adorable beauty reduced me in a mo-
ment to suffering the most inexpressible. I could not keep
my eyes off this charming object, and the more I admired
her the more the subtle poison penetrated my soul. I was as
if in a fever breathing left me a great movement of blood
suffocated me and with difficulty could my tongue utter
monosyllables. I tried in the meantime to conceal as much
as it was possible the distress and disorder with which my
soul was devoured. I had never till then felt anything like it.
I had found myself often loving, but this love easy to sup-
port, which often lost itself without knowing why, and of
which a short absence or another beauty would break the
chains making me forget as easily that which had rivetted
them ; but this charming person had put me in a frightful
state my wounds were deep I was thunderstruck and I
no longer knew myself. I did not speak to her of my depar-
ture, though that was the object of my visit ; and the uncle
invited me to spend the next day with them.
I returned home distracted, raving, melancholy, over-
whelmed, and with her image vividly painted in my imagina-
tion as if I continued to see her before me. Sleep did not
relieve my pains : I passed the night without shutting my
eyes, combating without ceasing cruelly between my love and
my duty to my father. Having returned five or six times
to her house, returning always more enamoured and more
tormented than ever every visit rendering me less master of
myself ; on the other hand, my father agreed to pardon my
follies on condition that I should arrive in Edinburgh in three
weeks : if I failed to comply with his order I would occasion
a second quarrel with him, worse than the first, ready to ex-
plode. How distressing my situation was ! My soul was
lacerated : my case was truly perplexing.
I have had a terrible youth to pass ; passionate, obstinate,
lively, unruly, uncontrollable with a great many other
113
faults ; in the meantime, without having ever done anything
against honour, probity, or which could wound the most
delicate feelings of a gallant man ; and I was always incap-
able of meanness. Too much indulged by the tenderness of
my mother, she supplied me with money underhand, which
served to feed my extravagances and follies, and I had only
to demand from her to receive it. In 1738, then, at the age
of eighteen years, the desire seized me of going to Russia to
see my two uncles, M. Douglas, Lieutenant- General and
Governor of Revel, and M. Hewitt, brother of my mother,
formerly a favourite of the Czar Peter, and President of the
College of Commerce ; but he had retired on the death of
that emperor with a considerable pension. My father would
not consent to this ; but having carried my remonstrances to
my Lady Jean Douglas, who was my ordinary resource in my
disputes with my father and my oracle, being the only person
who could convince me when I was naughty, and made me
desist immediately, she represented to my father, who was
greatly annoyed at my neglecting my studies, and plunging
into libertinism, that it was the only means of weaning me
from it, to send me away at a distance for some time from
my associates, young gentlemen who encouraged one another
in their debaucheries; and that it was fortunate this idea
had come of myself ; so this dear lady obtained my
father's consent to it.
My uncle, Hewitt, was a man of distinguished merit.
He had a great deal of good sense, spirit, attainments, and
experience. He had been promoted at the Court of Russia,
having entered into the service very young ; and in his youth
he had been as much a libertine as myself, by consequence
an excellent pilot to cause me escape the rocks upon which
he himself had split. He loved me greatly : he reproved me
with mildness, honesty, and patience. In place of the dis-
position (caustic, morose, and severe) of my father, who
having been always wise and philosophic from his infancy,
H
114
did not know how to sympathise and yield a little to the torrent
of a boiling blood, different by temperament from his own.
At the end of a year he taught me to think, and stifled a part
of the great fire and vivacity which had carried me away, as
if in spite of myself.
I had always had a decided inclination for the military
profession ; but my father not wishing that his only son
should be cut off by a cannon-ball, contradicted me in that
as he did continually in everything that I desired. My
uncle, Hewitt, had been Colonel of a Regiment in Russia ;
but at the battle of Narva he was wounded so dangerously
by a ball across the neck that he quitted the military service
to be at the head of the College of Commerce. He sub-
scribed very willingly to my desires of entering the service of
Russia; and one day when the Count G-ollovine and the
Prince Carakin were at dinner at his house, both Secretaries
of State and friends of my uncle, he presented me to them as
come from Scotland expressly for the purpose of entering the
service of Russia, and begged them to take me under their
protection. They responded so well to my wishes that at the
end of some days they had a commission as lieutenant made
out for me, with all the assurances possible that at the end of
the campaign of 1739 against the Turks I should have a com-
pany. I imparted to my father this opportunity of making
a figure in the world, and over and above, this powerful
patronage ; that I had, moreover, that of Field-Marshal Keith,
also a friend of my uncle Hewitt, who would render me a ser-
vice, and that I was certain to be greatly supported by my
uncle Douglas. My uncle wrote him a letter at the same
time very pressing to have his consent, but in place of con-
senting to it he answered me in a letter conceived in terms the
most severe, that I knew very well it was never his intention
that I should settle anywhere but in my native country;
that I had been all my life-time disobedient to his wishes, and
that if I persisted in acting contrary to them, as I had done,
115
I might depend upon it that he would disinherit me, and
leave all his fortune to my sisters. This was a great mis-
fortune for a young man, having all the appearance of being
one day rich, although riches were often imaginary, to make
him lose his fortune ; and it was cruel and unpardonable in a
father to conceal from his children the state of his affairs. In
yielding obedience to my father, I lost the only opportunity
that presented itself in my life of making a brilliant fortune.
There are moments when fortune opens the door to men to
attain success. Happy those who can discern and seize them
at the instant. General Keith pressed me much to avail
myself of the good inclinations of the two Ministers, reiterat-
ing to me his assurances that he would share with me
the friendship which he had for my uncle Hewitt. He was
then in his bed from the wounds which he had received at the
siege of Ockzacow in 1738, where he commanded ; and Lord
Marischal, his brother, having come to St. Petersburg to
take care of him, was an agreeable acquaintance which I
then made, and which I renewed afterwards at Paris in
1751, my Lord being then in that city in quality of Ambas-
sador of the King of Prussia.
Repelled by my father from entering the service of Russia,
my sojourn there became disgustful to me ; above all, since a
young man, Smollet, who had come to St. Petersburg in 1739,
with a design of entering the service, but who had not found
it agreeable to his taste, spoke to me so much of the pleasures
and amusements of London, that he gave me immediately a
wish to go thither ; and Smollet having himself resolved
to return thither, I decided to embark with him in the first
vessel that should sail from St. Petersburg, without waiting
for the consent of my father, his reply not being able to reach
me till after the freezing of the navigation of the Baltic,
waiting which, I should have been obliged to remain another
year in Russia. My uncle, after having greatly combated
my project of going to London, ceased in the end not to im-
116
portune me with regard to it. But as he saw better than I
that my father would be much enraged at my procedure, he
offered to advance me such sum as I should wish, on his
account, assuring me that my father would be unable for a
much longer time than I believed before he could send me
any more. I took only ten or twelve guineas, in the per-
suasion that my father would at once honour my Bills of
Exchange.
After having secured my passage for London in the same
ship in which M. Smollet was to embark, and having agreed
as to the price with the captain, Walker, captain of another
merchant vessel, which was to depart for London at the
same time, came to the coffee-room demanding of me to speak
to him particularly. He said to me, that having been informed
that I wished to go to London, he had come to beg me most
earnestly to accept my passage in his ship, which would sail
in company with that wherein my friend M. Smollet was ; and
that far from exacting anything for my passage, he would
regard it as an infinite obligation to keep him company ; that
fresh provisions would not be wanting on board, since I would
only have to give him a state of all that I should wish, and
he would furnish them at once ; that as to wine, there was no
person better provided than he was, having not only Spanish
wine, wine of Bourdeaux and Oporto, but many kinds of
wine besides the last voyage of his vessel having been to
traverse all the islands of Greece with some Lords who had
freighted her, and he had no other cargo but arms and legs of
statues, and a great many pieces of marble with inscriptions,
of which he understood nothing ; but above all, wherever he
could find good wine, he was careful to lay in a good stock.
He added that he was at his ease, without wife or children,
having realised seven or eight thousand guineas, which he
had in the bank in London ; that his vessel was his own pro-
perty, without having any partner ; and that he had decided
to sell her on his arrival in London, to pass the rest of his
117
days in a philosophical retreat. I had seen M. Walker many
times, and I had always distinguished him much among other
mariners for his probity, a great sweetness of character, the
most agreeable company, and much experience of the world,
and knowledge of good manners, and from fifty to sixty years
of age. He begged me to dine with him next day on board
his ship, and he would engage my friend, M. Smollet, to be of
the party, telling me that his captain with whom I had made
arrangements for my passage should be there also, and that
being his intimate friend he would take upon him to disen-
gage me of the word that I had given him to proceed with
his vessel. He gave us a magnificent repast, and finding him
the most agreeable company, I accepted with pleasure his
proposal.
We departed from St. Petersburg in company with the
other ship, in which M. Smollet was embarked, and having
had much calm weather our parties of pleasure were to belay
the two ships together to give a dinner to Smollet and his
captain, having been better provided than they in a thousand
sweets and little things which afford pleasure at sea. A
breeze of wind upon the coasts of Denmark at length sepa-
rated us, and we did not see each other again till we were at
London, where we arrived after a passage of six weeks. I
had all the amusement possible in the vessel. M. Walker
was full of continual attentions for me, acting as if I had
been his own son ; giving me good advices with much sin-
cerity and mildness. He was one of those sweet souls and
good hearts which one finds more commonly among the
English than anywhere else. Having more experience and
foresight than I then had, he always assured me that my
reconciliation with my father would not be so easy and
prompt as I imagined, according to the character which I had
often given him of him, as being extremely harsh and severe ;
and on arriving he engaged me to stay at his house in waiting
to receive news from my father. This I did, and this was
118
my good fortune, for having drawn a bill of exchange on my
father, and written letter upon letter, he persisted in refusing
to answer. Poor Walker took me sincerely into his friend-
ship, acting continually towards me with all the affection and
feeling of a father, so that I remember well the obligations
under which I was laid to him, which were conferred upon
me in such a noble and generous manner as not to make me
blush for them.
M. Walker had placed his vessel in the docks to have her
sold after our arrival in London, but not finding any person
to purchase her, and having an offer of a freight for Bour-
deaux, he desired to make another voyage before quitting the
profession of a mariner. He pressed me strongly to make the
voyage with him to keep him company, telling me that money
should not be wanting, his purse being at my service with all
his heart, and nothing that could afford me pleasure ; that
besides, I would have the pleasure of seeing France, and that
it would be a pastime, waiting till my father should grant his
pardon. I accepted with pleasure the obliging offer of this
worthy man, not seeing any other course to follow on account
of the silence and obstinacy of my father not choosing to
reply to my letters ; and everything was ready for our depar-
ture in two or three days.
My friend Smollet, who on his return to London had
obtained a lieutenancy in the regiment of Wentworth, lodged
in the Court end of the town ; and as I staid always at the
house of M. Walker, who had his house at Wapping, the
quarter of the seafaring people, we were at the two extremi-
ties of London, and I rarely saw him ; but as I was on the
eve of my departure with Walker, I went to pass a day with
him, and to take leave. Returning from his house about
eight o'clock at night, the lamps being lighted, in going along
Change Alley a passage like to that of the Palais Royal,
which abuts in the street de Richieleu absorbed in reflec-
tions and plunged in the deepest distractions which my deso-
119
late situation*] furnished me, all at at once I was awakened
from them by a voice which called me by my name. I turned
my head, and I saw M. Whitlock, a young English gentleman
whom I had known at St. Petersburg, where he had passed
the winter with the design of entering into the naval service
of Russia ; but being put out of sorts at St. Petersburg, and
his eldest brother not inclining to honour his Bills of Ex-
change, he was there also as ill at ease as I then was at
London. He engaged me to go and sup with him at his
house ; and having arrived at his lodging, I recounted to him
all my history since I had seen him, and my unpleasant situa-
tion by the obstinate silence of my father, which put me
tinder the necessity of availing myself of the obliging offer of
M. Walker, whom M. Whitlock had known at St. Petersburg,
to accompany him in his voyage to Bourdeaux. M. Whit-
lock, after having made me see how much my father would
be enraged a thousand times more against me, although he
was inclined to pardon me, when he understood that I was
not at London, but running on the seas, he obligingly offered
to lodge me, and to mess together in the same house with him,
and that he would not allow me to want for anything while
waiting till I had news from my father. He added that he
was then at his ease, having got his patrimony out of his
brother's hands. He proposed to me to sleep at his house,
and I consented to it on condition that we should go next
day, at six o'clock in the morning, to see M. Walker, who
approved of our reasons for remaining in London. We re-
mained to dinner with Walker, and I took leave of this
worthy man with tears in our eyes, with a mind penetrated
with gratitude for the paternal affection which he had mani-
fested to me.
How was I confounded and petrified when, in reading
the Gazette, I found there the tragical fate of this worthy
and honourable man ! His vessel went to the bottom in a
raging sea, three weeks after his departure from London,
120
and the unfortunate Walker perished with all his equipage,
without a single man in it being saved. How I did lament
the fate of this worthy and amiable man ! How I still do
so every time that I think of this incomprehensible event !
I shed tears for him in abundance ; at the same time that the
remarkable providence of an invisible power, which had pre-
vented me, by my meeting Whitlock in Change Alley, from
finishing my existence with him, filled my soul with admira-
tion and thankfulness.
Whatever name we may give it fate, chance, or Pro-
vidence its effects are visible and incomprehensible, as I
have experienced it in regard to myself, although the veil that
covers it from our eyes be impenetrable to feeble mortals.
It failed to change his resolution of not going more to sea,
and for accomplishing his unfortunate destiny ; no person
appeared in six weeks to buy his ship, and having again the
offer of an advantageous freight for Bourdeaux, which would
gain him three or four hundred guineas of profit. That I was
not at the bottom of the sea, it happened that Whitlock and
I should at the same instant walk along Change Alley,
where I had never passed before, and that he should have
recognized me by the light of the lamps, for I would not have
recognized my father at my side having been then in the
deepest abstraction, and absorbed in the most cruel reflections
upon my situation. It was necessary that I should have had
to take leave of M. Smollet to fall in with Whitlock ; in short,
it happened that Whitlock had sufficient friendship for me
not having much frequented his company at St. Petersburg
to offer me his purse, and to cause me at the same time to
enter with him in the same lodging-house.* This is a series
* I have passed all my life, so often preserved as if by miracle from
perishing, always in difficulties, overwhelmed with misery, persecuted with-
out ceasing by fortune. My life was passed in the service, where I exposed
my body to the most excessive fatigues which I put myself to, to render me
useful to the service. They have granted me a pension, out of which to
furnish me the mere necessaries of life. M. the Duke d'Anville and the
121
of surprising events that could have never happened by pure,
blind, irregular chance, in the course of its progress. Al-
though one were to make reflections all one's life on this stroke
of Providence, the more one tries to fathom it, the more will
it appear to be involved in darkness. All is enveloped in
obscurity, uncertainty and doubts. The worthy but unfortu-
nate Walker was a virtuous, good man, of great uprightness,
generous and compassionate for his fellows in adversity, of
a mild and cheerful character, and possessing all the fine
qualities that could make him pleasant and agreeable in
society.
My father left me to languish in London five or six
weeks more before replying to my letters. He had a great
deal of spirit and experiences, very impatient and severe,
ignorant of the mildness and reasonableness which it was
necessary to have with youth, which are all born with different
characters which they take from bodily constitution. A
young man the most lively and wild can be reclaimed by
mildness ; but never by a great stoical severity, which only
serves to agitate his mind, and to revolt him against his
father, whom he would regard more as a tyrant than as his
friend, and will not value him. After having exposed me to
a thousand perils of every kind, where a young man might
fall, delivered to despair, he sent me at length a bill of ex-
Abbe Terrace came to curtail the funds which I had to subsist upon.
After having been saved so many times miraculously from perishing, shall I
escape in my old age, or die of hunger and misery ? " I do not fear," said
Bedoyere, ' ' but that cruel poverty, which breaks the torn heart, enervates
the soul, and abases the mind." Unfortunate Spouses, p. 152. Homer says
in his Odyssy, "Indigence breaks down the soul, and robs us of half the
spirit." Thus it is a truth anciently recognized, and which I have ex-
perienced myself. " Fortune," said Charles V., " obliged me to raise the
seige of Metz. She is like all women she confers her favours on the young,
and withholds them from grey hairs." She has never been favourable to me
during all the course of my life. I make a great difference between fortune
and Providence.
122
change to pay my debts, ordering me at the same time to
return to Edinburgh in three weeks, if I wished to profit by
his good dispositions of being reconciled with me. It was
precisely at this critical moment that chance made me en-
counter this angelic person. I remained in London in the
adoration of this divine beauty till there remained only
sufficient money to make my voyage with economy; and,
struggling continually between love and reason, I took all at
once the resolution of departing next morning, without seeing
her again, to take leave, in spite of myself, and under the fear
that sole regard for the charming Miss Peggy might in
an instant overturn all my sage and prudent resolutions.
In again revisiting her, I should no longer be master of
myself, and would involve myself in a new chain of embar-
rassment. I arrived at my father's house, the reconciliation
immediately took place, and the past was forgotten.
During six years that I had remained in Scotland
absent from the adorable Miss Peggy, the uncertainty of her
sentiments in regard to me, the little hope of seeing her
again, time which effaces entirely new objects, although one
of inferior beauty, had always made me insensibly lose
sight of her. But the instant that I found myself again in
London, within reach of seeing her again, her image came
back again immediately to my soul, my passion rekindled
all at once so strongly that the certainty of perishing on
the scaffold to see her again would not have hindered me
from going to her. I only waited paying her a visit for the
clothes which I had ordered from a tailor, and he favoured
my impatience by bringing them, with my fine embroidered
vest within twenty-four hours.
Thus habited I took a hackney coach, which I sent back
again near to the house of her uncle. Having asked of the
lacquey who opened me the door if his master was at home, he
answered me not, but that they expected him to dinner. I
informed myself if his niece, Miss Peggy, was in town or in
123
the country. The sole reply of the lacquey, " that she was
at home," caused me such a palpitation of the heart and a
shaking of the nerves that with difficulty I could support my-
self. T entered into the saloon, and I again saw the lacquey
to ask if she was visible. He returned at once to announce to
me that she was just coming down. The presence of this
charming person, who appeared more beautiful than ever,
redoubled my disorder, and I remained like a statue. It was
in vain that I attempted to speak to her ! My mouth and
my tongue refused their functions. Confused, and as if
petrified I had my eyes fixed on her in ecstacy an'd ad-
miration. As soon as I had a little recovered myself and
was able to speak, I said to her, that having been engaged
in the unfortunate affair of Prince Edward, I had hesitated
much whether I should present myself at her uncle's house,
fearing to expose my friends to troublesome embarrassment
in case that I should be discovered with them ; that in the
meantime the remembrance of the civilities and kindnesses
which I had received from her uncle six years ago, had
always been impressed so vividly on my mind that I could
not resist the temptation of offering him with loud voice the
assurances of my gratitude and thanks. During the time
that I spake, the adorable Miss Peggy fixed a look fall of
pity, of compassion, and of sweetness on me, and answered
me that her uncle having always had a sincere friendship for
me, would certainly take a deep interest in my misfortune,
and would not regard any risk that he might run for the
pleasure of seeing me and being useful to me. Her uncle
entered at the moment, greatly surprised at seeing me again,
and he embraced me with affection. I related to him my
disasters. He remarked to me that it was good for me to
wish to be a maker of king?. As for him he cared very
little whether King George, King James, or the Devil was
upon the throne of England, provided he left him peaceable
possessor of his goods, and these he would not choose to lose
124
for all the kings of the universe. He added that he was
greatly affected with my situation ; he counselled me to avoid
the roads where I might meet in with my compatriots, offered
me his house heartily to wait till I should find an opportunity
of saving myself beyond sea, and he begged me to begin from
that moment by staying to dine with them. There came a
great many persons after mid-day to visit, to whom the uncle
presented me under the name of M. Leslie ; and I made one
of a party of quadrille with Miss Peggy and two other ladies.
How the time glides swiftly with the person you love ! I
passed the whole day with her, the most delicious that I had
hitherto known, and which appeared to me as but an instant!
The uncle said to me at supper that he had remained in the
house on my account, and he begged me to be very sure not
to stand upon ceremonies, as he would not regard me in
future as a stranger at his house. I returned to sleep for the
night at the house of my generous friend, the milliner, with
my mind well content and satisfied. At parting the uncle
invited me to come every day to breakfast, and to pass the
day at his house ; and his adorable niece joined in his invita-
tions, saying that by coming at an early hour in the morning
I should run less risk of encountering any of my acquain-
tances who might be able to recognise me. He offered me a
room in his house, which I could not accept of, fearing lest
I might occasion him any mal-adventure in case I should be
followed in the streets by any one who might know me and
be taken in his house.
Having passed five days continually with my adorable
Peggy from nine in the morning till eleven o'clock at night
(at which time I returned to sleep at the house of my hospi-
table friend), her conversation, easy and full of good sense and
spirit, her knowledge, which she made appear with modesty
and without affectation, truly learned without making it ap-
pear ostentatiously, her sweet manners, delicate sentiments,
in fine, all astonished me and filled me with admiration at the
125
perfections of her mind equally beautiful as her figure. I had
never yet dared to tell her that I loved her, fearing to shock
her. How timid one is when one loves sincerely ! What a
change in my character ! I did not know myself again ! I
had always been very enterprizing and bold in presence of
the sex; and if I failed to succeed with them I made my
retreat with a good countenance, without being disconcerted j
but in presence of this divine person I lowered my eyes when
she looked at me, and every time that I wished to raise them
to her, my passion immediately brought a trembling on me.
I remained stupified. I did not open my mouth. She was
to me a superior being whom I feared to lose by revolting her
by a declaration of love, in case her sentiments in regard
to me might not be in my favour; always terrified at offending
her even by the smallest word, and not making her under-
stand otherwise my excess of love and tenderness but by the
sighs which escaped me, or by my anxieties, which she
might well attribute to my unfortunate situation, and not to
its true cause. Having passed a whole day tete-a-tete with
her, after having suffered a long and cruel conflict in wishing
to declare to her the secret of my soul, without power to
overcome my irresolution, ready to suffocate I threw myself
all at once at her feet ; I seized her hands in transports, I
kissed them both at the same time, I bathed them with my
tears. I had not but the power of an incoherent voice, and
my lips trembled to tell her that I adored her, that I did
not wish to live but for her, that my passion was of an old
date, my eyes having conspired to tell her the situation of my
heart in 1740, before my departure for Scotland. She made
me rise immediately, telling me coldly that she had always
esteemed me much that she had true regret at seeing me
so absurd in the terrible crisis in which I then found myself,
between life and death ; that I could see daily some of my
comrades whom they led to the scaffold, that from one
moment to another I might follow them ready to suffer the
12G
same punishment ; and she exhorted me to think more solidly
and to dream rather of the means of saving myself than to fill
myself with chimeras. " Ah ! my angel," answered I briskly,
" if you do not condescend to love me, I shall be envious of
their lot, and I should choose before that death. It is only you
who are able to make me appreciate life, and without you it is
not worth the trouble of preserving it." From that moment I
had a tacit permission to express to her all the tenderness
and affection which the most violent passion could inspire ;
but drawing down upon me always the strongest reprimands
and counsels to behave more like a reasonable man.
Her cold and reserved manners dissolved and afflicted me
to death ; while in company with other men her gracious,
prepossessing, and engaging manners, and comporting herself
altogether different than with me, rendered me jealous to
excess. I imagined that all those to whom she showed the
least politeness and civility were greatly more than me in her
good graces and favour. One of these friends had made her
a present of a very beautiful tortoiseshell snuff-box, enamelled
and set in gold, with a miniature, altogether a beauty, being
the first of that kind of snuff boxes that had appeared in
England.
Finding myself tete-a-tete with her, while I spoke to her,
I observed her inattentive and often absent, turning round
her snuff-box and fixing her attention on examining the minia-
ture. My jealousy was roused against the snuff-box. I re-
proached her with bitterness, that certainly her mind was not
occupied with the miniature which she had seen so many
times, but that she could think at that moment from it to
him that was present ; that he was the happiest of mortals in
possessing her heart, while my cruel and miserable lot was
altogether calculated to move pity ; overwhelmed with afflic-
tion of all kinds, and ready to sink under my misfortunes,
I could support with patience her sternnesses and the cold air
which she continually testified to me ; but the sole thought
127
that she loved another, and the idea of having a fortunate
rival lacerated iny soul, and broke my heart. My adorable
Peggy, in her first movement, threw the snuff-box against the
marble chimney-piece, which broke it in a thousand pieces,
saying to me with fire and vivacity, that I should never have
reason to fear a rival ; that she loved me tenderly, and that
she would no longer disguise her sentiments for me. She
conjured me in the meantime, on learning her manner
of thinking, 'not to abuse it, and to keep myself within
bounds regarding her love for me, which should be constant
and inviolable as long as she existed. Heavens ! what were
my transports. The surprise made me remain for a moment
stupified and immoveable, not being able to believe my ears.
I seized her in my arms I pressed her to my bosom I gave
her a thousand tender kisses shedding, at the same time,
tears of joy. I swore to her an eternal love and friendship ;
that my tenderness and affection should be unalterable ; my
fidelity proof against everything till my last breath. These
were the first vows that I had made and pronounced in all
the sincerity of my soul, and in all truth I adored her. She
deserved to be so by the whole universe as a prodigy ; all the
perfections and amiable qualities which one could find in her
sex were united in her ; and her ravishing beauty which
none could behold without being captivated was the least of
her charms. Since this avowal of my angelic Peggy, I regret-
ted every moment that was not passed with her ; the hours
flew with extreme swiftness, and the hours and days did not
appear but as instants. I saw her every day, and the last
day seemed the shortest the least petty absence appeared to
me insupportable, cost me pains, and they were for me sad
and mournful moments when I had her not before my eyes to
adore her. I did not desire from the Supreme Being any
other treasures than those which I possessed, and I had no
other prayers to offer up to heaven than to grant me the
continuation of the felicity which I enjoyed, which might serve
128
as an emblem upon earth of the state in which they represent
the blessed. Happy moments those which I have passed with
my charming Peggy ! the only ones that I have ever known,
and the only ones tbat I shall ever know ; but I have since
paid dearly for them by the tears which she has cost me, and
which she will yet cost me every time that I recall these
delicious hours which fortune has converted into bitterness
and regrets for the rest of my life.
Having heard one day in my chamber a noise in the
street, I approached the window, but what was my surprise
when I saw a dozen of my comrades escorted by the police,
who conducted them to be executed on the scaffold at Ken-
nington Common. This was the garrison that Prince
Edward had left at Carlisle on our retreat from England,
and Messieurs Hamilton and Townley the governors of that
town and citadel, were of the number of that unfortunate
troop. 1 was so much the more struck at seeing them that
but for my obstinacy and firmness I would have then been
with them at that moment to perish in their sufferings. M.
the Duke of Perth, my Colonel, commanded me, on our
retreat, to remain in Carlisle with my company. I answered
him that I would fight to the last drop of my blood for Prince
Edward, but that never would I be left to be a victim by
choice ; and I decamped from his house in a fury, without
waiting his reply. Persisting in my resolution, I departed
next morning with our army ; and upon the news of the cap-
ture of Carlisle by the Duke of Cumberland two days after
our departure, the Duke of Perth, who was very narrow-
minded, but a very honest and gallant man, said to me that
he pardoned me for having disobeyed him, and that he was
deceived as to the bad state of that place, believing that it
could sustain a siege. I thanked, from the bottom of my
heart, the Almighty who had watched over my destiny, for
had it not been for my obstinacy my position at that moment
would have been melancholy, by finishing in like manner my
129
days in torments. What a difference of fate ! Not to have
but a quarter of an hour more to live, or to be the most
happy of mortals, as I then was. How the misery or hap-
piness of all one's life depends upon small things, and is but
the affair of an instant, for ever irrecoverable ! The smallest
error of judgment in our decision entails a train of effects, ad
infinitum, necessary, and inevitable.
The little attention I had paid to my hospitable friend
the milliner, began to aggrieve her mind a little, rendered her
uneasy, and put her some times out of humour. In fact, she
had all the reason possible to be displeased with me, as I
passed all my time with my adorable Peggy ; and absent from
her, I was thoughtful, heedless, little capable of showing to
my hostess all the acknowledgment she merited, for the essen-
tial services which she had rendered me. In short, I was in
a mind the most sorrowful and disagreeable for any other
than my dear Peggy, in spite of the efforts which I often made
upon myself to cause myself appear at least with a forced gaiety,
with a sufficiently bad grace, as I had never before known my-
self to counterfeit, so that no one could read my displeasure
and discontent in my physiognomy. My hostess often made
me light reprimands on the subject of my coldness and indif-
ference. I blamed myself for it, for she was truly a worthy
woman, who merited a better return on my part for the con-
tinual attentions which she had shown me, and the lively
and tender interest she had taken in my fate. I always
accused my cruel situation for being the cause of it ; and I
endeavoured to persuade her of the impossibility of being
otherwise, when between life and death, seeing my com-
panions led daily to the scaffold, and uncertain if I should not
soon follow them, as to which my lot in that respect did not
depend but upon an unhappy moment of being discovered.
This amiable, good woman, who had a great sweetness in her
character, and good sense, was sufficiently disposed to believe
all that I said to her.
130
Being at lunch one day in my room with my hostess, I was
confounded on seeing my charming Peggy enter it, urged by
a desire to see my hostess from her want of confidence in me.
My poor hostess having regarded at first my angelic Peggy,
lowered her eyes, blushed, and remained as if stupified.
She wished to go away, but I prevented her. My Peggy
having satisfied her curiosity, departed in about a quarter of
an hour, and whispered in my ear, descending the stair
that she had nothing to fear. My hostess reproached me
immediately, notwithstanding without bitterness, that she
was no longer astonished at my indifference ; that she saw
well the cause, but that she could not blame me as she was
the most beautiful person she had ever beheld, with manners
the most engaging, and an air of affability, full of goodness ;
adding, that certainly there was no man who could resist her
charms. I wished to avail myself of the same arguments as
before, but she was no longer the dupe of them. Whatever con-
fidence I had in the sweetness and fine disposition of my hostess,
it was a matter of prudence to take precautions against the
evil effects which might happen to me from this adventure ;
so much the more, as she could in a moment of bad humour
take a speedy vengeance too fatal and melancholy for me,
without giving her any trouble ; she had only to go and in-
form against me, and cause me to be arrested on the spot ;
also having in view similar instances of resentment on the
part of women who believed themselves slighted. So I
looked out the same day for another lodging ; and I was
sufficiently fortunate to find an apartment at the house of a
periwig maker, in the neighbourhood of the hotel of my dear
Peggy. Having told my landlady, the next morning, that
having found an opportunity of saving myself beyond sea, I
would move at once ; taking leave of this amiable and good
woman, and giving her all the assurances possible of my
gratitude and everlasting remembrance of the services she
had rendered me. She embraced me with tears in her eyes,
131
truly afflicted at our separation ; and not having a heart
sufficiently hard to resist those beautiful tearful eyes, I was
sensibly touched by her sentiments for me.
One would require to know all the force of love and
friendship united, to be able to form an idea of the uninter-
rupted felicity which I enjoyed with my charming Peggy ;
the moments were too delicious and precious not to banish
everything that could molest our tete-a-tetes ; her door was
shut to all visits which she paid by the score every day,
never being visible to any person, and finding always plaus-
ible reasons to justify to her uncle this change in her manner
of living. How everything pleases when the mind is satisfied
and content ! We sallied forth, often to the environs of
London, where Nature even seemed to have changed its
countenance. Everything appeared smiling, the solitary walks
gay, the verdure beautiful, the colours of the flowers brilliant,
the points of view picturesque, the innocence of rustic life to
be envied, everything charmed the senses, and offered an
agreeable prospect; it was the presence of my Peggy that
embellished these rural scenes. The night often surprised us
in our delicious walks without our ever thinking of it, de-
ceived by the swiftness of time. I was at the height of my
wishes, and insensible to all that did not immediately concern
my present happiness, of which I appreciated all the value.
All the daily executions of my comrades made no impression
upon me. I feared a danger much more frightful than death.
It was that of being separated from her, she being all that in-
terested me in life, and I declined all the opportunities in my
power of saving myself in foreign countries, which her uncle
and many other persons were occupied continually in procur-
ing for me ; believing it impossible ever to survive a separa-
tion, with the uncertainty of seeing her again, and the pro-
spect of that alone made me shake and tremble, so I had
always for a pretext the smallness of the security of the op-
portunities which they offered me daily, although they were
132
willing to get me a passport, and signed even by the Duke of
Newcastle, secretary of state, to go to Holland.
Having learned that one of my relations was newly arrived
from Scotland, on returning in the evening from our walk, I
mentioned to my Peggy my anxiety to learn the news of my
family, and in place of going to sup at her house as was my
custom, I took a hackney coach and set myself down at his
lodgings. Having found him at home, he began immediately
to offer me his compliments of condolence on the loss I had
sustained ; but I paid no attention to it, imagining he spoke
of my misfortunes, which I had in common with all those who
were attached to Prince Edward. In the meantime he made
me to comprehend quickly that my mother and my sister
Rollo had both died a few days after my departure from
Scotland, and that my mother had finished her existence by
pronouncing as her last words " I die perfectly content and
satisfied, knowing that my poor and dear son is saved." He
was one of those grammatical blockheads who possessed a fund
of the Greek and Latin languages, but who were profoundly
ignorant of the human heart and the most ordinary circum-
stances of life. Had he been capable of reflection, he would
have prepared me for receiving a shock so truly overwhelming.
How does Heaven mix its bitterness with its sweets! I
remained for a moment stupified and petrified like a statue !
In the end, I turned my back upon him, and departed preci-
pitately without answering a word to his sottish compliment.
Having resumed my place in the hackney coach with difficulty,
I told the coachman to take me back again to my own house.
I was well nigh suffocated in the carriage, where I fainted
away for some minutes without consciousness. Fortunately,
on feeling the choking and difficulty of breathing coming on,
I all at once loosed my neck ; by detaching also the neck of
my shirt, I recovered from my fainting with a torrent of tears,
which relieved me greatly. The coachman, who knew no-
thing of my state, always drove on, and I even believe that the
133
motion of this rude vehicle did me good. Arrived at my
lodging, my landlord, who had a good and compassionate
heart, seeing me in affliction, followed me into my chamber,
and having learned the cause of my being out of order, wished
to sympathise with me by preaching all at once morality, and
these stupid, old, and usual topics of consolation. I took him
like a fury by the shoulders and pushed him rudely out of my
chamber. I dared him to enter it again till I required him.
Then shutting my door with violence, I threw myself imme-
diately upon my bed with my clothes on, and I passed the
night in tears and groans without shutting my eyes. I accused
myself of having been the innocent cause of the death of the
most tender of mothers, by her sorrows and anxieties about me
since the Battle of Culloden. I viewed myself as a monster
of ingratitude, for having been able to remain two months at
the house of my Lady Jean Douglas, at a quarter of a league
from her, then sick and on her death bed, without exposing a
thousand times my life rather than not seeing her again, to
embrace her and to bid her an eternal adieu, and to receive her
benediction. It appeared to me that this would have been to
me a great consolation, and that after that I would have
seemed to be paying a tribute to nature with patience and
resignation. I blamed at the same time my Lady Jean
Douglas and my father who had prevented me. This was the
most cruel night that it was possible to experience. The death
of my mother made me think less of that of my sister Rollo,
though I loved her greatly. My father in his letters concealed
from me their deaths, fearing to affect me too much, and
thinking that my situation gave me sufficiency of troubles
without adding to them by this melancholy news. He was
wrong ! Had he communicated it to me with precaution, he
would have prevented that surprise which might have been
fatal to me, coming as it did like a clap of thunder ! On
coming home, I wrote a note to the uncle of my charming
Peggy, letting him know of my affliction.
134
The next day towards ten o'clock in the morning, I heard
a knocking at my door. I was still upon my bed, such as I was
on entering the house, with all my clothes on, and without
having even changed the attitude into which I found I had
thrown myself upon my bed. Oh, heavens ! what a solace to
my sufferings, when instead of my host, whom I believed at
the door with the intention of teasing me again with his im-
pertinence, I distinguished the sweet voice of my adorable
Peggy, who came as an angel of consolation to dissipate in an
instant the tumultuous tempests with which my soul was over-
whelmed, and to recal me again to life ! My divine beauty had
arranged this visit with her uncle, who naturally would not
the company of afflicted persons, in order to engage me to love
come and pass the day at her house. The moment I saw her,
I felt as if a restorative balm had penetrated with swiftness
into my mind. My torments and agitations suddenly dimin-
ished. My soul on regarding her became immediately serene
and tranquil. She loved me tenderly. She partook vividly
of my pains, and was penetrated with my affliction. She
joined her tears with mine, and the precious drops which fell
from her beautiful eyes, which I wiped away greedily with
my lips, pierced my heart. To see her afflicted was a
thousand times more insupportable than my own sorrows and
anxieties. My charming Peggy reanimated me by lessons of
philosophy different from the pedantic maxims of the schools.
She commended my affliction for the loss of a tender mother,
and her conversation was more than ever essentially necessary
on account of my forced estrangement from my native country.
She excused the weaknesses which I had testified in delivering
myself up wholly to my sorrows, of which a hard heart could
not be susceptible. She pointed out to me with energy that
life was too much subject to the dispensations of Providence,
and to a chain of perpetual misfortunes, to allow us to mourn
with regret those who are beyond the condition of feeling
all the bitterness of them; above all, one oppressed with
135
disease, such as my mother was for many years. She made re-
flections upon my critical situation, and how very dangerous it
was for me to render myself ill at this critical moment by
giving myself thus over to sorrows equally disagreeable and
fruitless. In fine, the heavenly and persuasive language of
my charming Peggy, the refinement and delicacy of her
reasonings, the eloquence uttered by a mouth so beautiful and
so dear, made a greater impression on me in one hour, than all
the rigmarole of foolish sermons by their trick would have
been able to make upon me for ages. I felt my heart imme-
diately lightened and balm restored to my soul. She insisted
that I should go and dine, and pass the day at her house.
There was nothing that I could refuse her, out of sorts as I
was, and almost unrecognizable, with my eyes red and much
inflamed. As soon as I had changed my linens, I repaired to
the house of her uncle, who took great part in my affliction ;
and my charming Peggy devoted all her attention to dissipate
the melancholy and distress with which I was overwhelmed.
Man does not rest long in the same state. All his passions
lift up at a time the ocean of his soul, and what inundations
of ideas result from this intestine shock ! Tempest stirs this
outrageous sea, and the calm which succeeds is not separated
but by a slight interval.
How reciprocal love, and founded on friendship, is the
most precious gift of fortune ! What is the grandeur of
its force and the extent of its power ? It is superior and
above all the riches, the honours, the titles, and the other
baubles which we seek after, with so much avidity ; at the
same time, how invulnerable and insensible to the most
embittered stings of adversity ! It blunts the arrows of mis-
fortunes the most appalling, and allays the load of pains and
sufferings the most insupportable. Content and satisfied by
their mutual sentiments of tenderness and affection, they
brave fortunes in the midst of persecutions the most en-
venomed, resting unshaken, and do not succumb to the
136
rigours of its power. It is only in the union of the different
sexes that one is able to find this true friendship, which is
proscribed the society of men. Two souls so blended and
incorporated together, can have but the same sentiment and
manner of thinking ; the prospect of misery fails to make
them tremble ! They support it without murmuring ; they
erase the scourge of ambition, not having other than a
continuation of their sentiments, which is their happiness.
How many times have I begged of heaven only but the cabin
and the fare of Samuel, with my Peggy, to be the most happy
of mortals ? My dear Peggy has often reciprocated the same
wishes ; and I am persuaded that there is nothing there that
could disturb our satisfaction and contentment. Felicity is
an imaginary thing ! Let one suppose himself happy, and he
is truly so. Providence has made me know for once in my
life that there can exist perfect happiness on earth, not sub-
ject to the reverses and caprices of fortune ; but alas ! this is
only to impoison the remainder of my days, by the melancholy
recollection of these happy moments.
Some days after, having used my host somewhat harshly,
he sent his servant to say to me that if I was visible,
he wished to have the honour of speaking with me. On
entering my chamber, he made a great many apologies for
having taken upon him to endeavour to console me, saying
that he was so touched with my affliction, that his heart bled
for me. He proposed to me, as a party of pleasure, to con-
duct me to the house of one of his friends, who had promised
him a window upon Tower Hill to see the head taken off,
after dinner, of two rebels, the Earl of Kilmarnock and
Lord Balmerino, two Scottish peers. I thanked him for his
attention ; but I excused myself to him, saying that he could
see well that I had a heart too sensible to take pleasure in
that sort of spectacle. He did not imagine that I was as
guilty as they, and that there was no other difference between
us but the fate which had befallen me in enabling me to
escape being made prisoner.
137
A friend came to announce to me that the captain of a ship,
whose sentiments he knew as those of an honest and faith-
ful man, undertook out of regard for him to take me on
board his ship under disguise as a sailor, but, in order to
avail myself of it, it was necessary for me to embark the
next morning. The thought of separating me from all that
was dear to me shocked me. Quit my adorable Peggy ! I
shuddered at it ! I answered him that this opportunity was
not without risk of being discovered, for they had only to
examine my hands, too delicate for a sailor, and my not knowing
the business, the deceit would be immediately found out. He
removed all these obstacles by telling me that the captain had
foreseen them, and would cause me pass for an invalid from
the moment that I should enter his vessel. He insisted
much that I should profit by this opportunity, desiring ar-
dently to see me out of danger ; but his reasonings were use-
less, and he could not comprehend how I should expose my
head to the scaffold, while I had the means of saving myself
from danger. He was ignorant that I loved my Peggy more
than life.
I recounted to my charming Peggy that an opportu-
nity had at length presented itself of saving me beyond seas,
by a captain of a merchant vessel, who had offered to take
me on board, disguised as a sailor, next day in the evening,
and next day he was to set sail, insomuch that he saw no
danger of my being discovered. I did not say to her what I
had decided on. She felt immediately, many times changing
colour, remaining confused without answering anything,
plunged in her reflections, and sustaining a cruel conflict in
herself, as I was easily able to see, by her restlessness and
embarrassed air. After a moment's silence, she said to me
with liveliness, and, at the sametime, with tears in her eyes,
" Yes, my dear friend, I prefer your safety to my own satis-
faction and tranquility ! " In the meantime, she was forced
to confess that I was very unfortunate. I did not leave her
138
an instant longer in pain. I embraced her tenderly; and
said to her that I had not only rejected this opportunity,
but that I would never avail myself of any one they might
propose to me, choosing rather to die a thousand times than
to separate myself from her, whose absence would be insup-
portable and render life a burden.
While we were dining one day tete-a-tete, I perceived
that all at once she faltered, with an uneasy and embarrassed
air, with her eyes continually fixed on the windows of the
street, rising at every moment, and without ceasing she left
and re-entered the chamber. Having asked several times
with earnestness what it was, if she was ill, she answered me
in equivocal monosyllables. I supplicated her in the end
with clasped hands to tell me frankly the reason of her un-
easiness for a quarter of an-hour. " Ah ! my dear friend,"
exclaimed she, " you are lost ! Behold a man who is cer-
tainly a bowman, whom I have remarked this long time
passing and repassing before the house with his eyes fixed
incessantly on the door. It is without doubt that he has been
sent to keep sight of you, waiting till a detachment should
come to make you prisoner. Perhaps some one has recog-
nized you this morning, and having followed you to the house
without your having perceived it, would all at once inform
against you. I have visited the house from the cellar to the
garret, and there is not a place where you could be con-
cealed." I examined this man, and, positively, it was not a
bowman who could have such a villainous look. This ad-
venture alarmed me, the more so, that some one had come
three days before, dressed and with the air of a street porter,
asking for me at her uncle's, and as he did not choose to tell
from what person he came, they said to him that I was
gone. At the beginning, when I staid at the house of my
good friend, the milliner, I had told her very imprudently the
address of the uncle of my Peggy, not then foreseeing the
consequence. I suspected at first that this was a spice of
139
vengeance on her part, not having a doubt but that she must
have known that I was every day in the house of my dear
Peggy from morning to night. In the meantime, reflecting
upon her great sweetness and goodness of character, I could
not bring myself to believe that she could be guilty of such
infamy. I went every morning in a hackney coach in going to
the house of my Peggy with the blinds drawn up ; and thus
it was next to impossible to have been known by any one in
the streets ; in short, I could not know what to think of it.
This man not discontinuing his promenade, and looking
always at the door as he passed, I did not know what course
to take, undecided whether I should sally out at once, be-
fore the detachment arrived, trusting to my sword and legs
(which would cause a terrible uproar in the street), or if I
should remain quiet in the house to await the upshot. My
charming Peggy, breaking the difficulty and my embarrass-
ment with tenderness, said, with fire and vivacity, " No !
they shall never make you die on the scaffold. If I cannot
succeed in saving you by the influence of my parents, who
are in favour at Court, I will come and see you in prison, in
the evening of the day of your execution, with two doses of
poison, and I will take one of them to show you the example
to avail yourself of the other." Oh, heaven ! the idea which
my adorable Peggy suggested, made me tremble, and the pro-
position filled me with horror.* I did not in the least degree
doubt that she would not have been capable of keeping her
* Although an admirer of the works of the celebrated J. J. Rousseau
as much as any one, I do not find in the portrait of his hero, St. Preux, in
the novel, " Heloise," but a brute, whose love is founded solely upon her
enjoyment, without which love is baseless. When he is tempted to throw
her into the water on coming the better to drown himself with her, it is
a frightful jealousy on account of the deprivation of the power of being
able brutally to enjoy Madame Wolmar. When one loves truly upon a love
founded on friendship, one might well kill himself through despair ; but it
is not natural that one who loves sincerely, with friendship and tenderness,
could ever think of making the dear object which possesses entirely his soul
perish. The very idea is revolting.
140
word, knowing all the violence and ardour of the English fair
sex, above that of every other nation. As to myself personally,
poison would have been all that I could have wished for, as
the most acceptable after having been condemned, and a service
of soul truly great to have procured it for me. I beseeched
my Peggy to go with me again through the house. In going
through the same, I observed a window in the storeroom,
from which one could get out upon the roof, and go from
thence upon the roof of the adjoining house. I sent forth-
with my Peggy to remain as a sentinel at the window of the
drawing-room, with a silver bell in her hand, to ring as soon
as she should see any one approach the door to knock ; and
I agreed with her that that should be the signal for me to go
upon the roof. I took off my shoes, fearing that they might
make me slide upon the slates, and break my neck, which I
put into my pockets, and 1 held the window with both my
hands, to be ready to go at the instant I should hear the
sound. Having remained for a quarter of an-hour in this
position, with all the anxiety possible, my dear Peggy came
back with her countenance changed, and said to me imme-
diately, laughing, " The devil take them both. It is, it ap-
pears, the sweetheart of my maid. She has just come to ask
of me permission to go out to walk with him, and the moment
she was in the street she took familiarly his arm. The
abominable-looking villain of a man has given us a dreadful
alarm."
A L few days after this adventure, being at dinner with
Peggy and her uncle, the footman told me that there was
some one in the ante-chamber who wished to speak to me.
I went out immediately, and was very much surprised to see
there M. Colville, the man of business of Lady Jean Douglas.
He told me that she had formed the resolution for some time
of going to reside in France, and that he had been sent to
London to procure a passport, where she could take one
domestic more than she had, in order to carry me along with
141
her to save me in Holland ; that he had left her at Hunting-
don, which is about twenty leagues to the north of London,
at the house of M. Rate, where she would remain three days
to wait me before departing for Harwich ; and that she had
in her suite M. Stuart, and Mademoiselle Hewitt. What
disagreeable news ! Before knowing my divine Peggy I
would have been but too glad to find this opportunity of
saving my life ; but the case was changed. I did not live,
nor desire to live, but for her. I remained for some moments
confounded, and without knowing what to answer. I was
very decided not to avail myself of the offer of Lady Jean
Douglas, at the same time that I was embarrassed to find at
once a plausible excuse to justify my refusal, fearing that
she would imagine by this extravagant conduct that my
head was turned ; for no sensible person could imagine
that any one who was in a situation liable to be executed
on the scaffold, as soon as he was discovered, should reject
^,n opportunity of saving himself from danger. After a
moment's reflection, I said to M. Colville that I should be all
my life thankful and penetrated with the most lively grati-
tude for the kindness of Lady Jean Douglas, but that my
friends in London having found many opportunities to enable
me to pass beyond seas, without any danger of being dis-
covered, I would not, of all things in the world, expose her lady-
ship further to those troublesome embarrassments after having
so much proved her kindness ; and I begged M. Colville to
state in his letter to her, not to wait for me at Huntingdon,
not having it in my power to avail myself of her generous and
obliging offers, seeing the inconveniences to which I should
expose her. M. Colville departed immediately, and I returned
to the table without, in the meantime, saying what he
had been about ; I only said that it was Lady Jean Douglas's
man of business whom she had sent to learn my news.
I trembled lest the uncle, not knowing with whom I had
been in conference, should not remain in the dining-room
142
to eat by anxiety for me ; and my extravagance having been
then discovered, would appear to him inconceivable, and
would lead him to entertain suspicions of the true motive of
my refusal. When the uncle departed, as he usually did
after dinner, I communicated to my dear Peggy the obliging
offer of Lady Jean Douglas, and the difficulty with which I
had got clear of it ; adding that I had refused it, as I should
ever do everything that could separate me from her. " Ah !
my dear friend," she answered me, " you have done very ill
by the refusal. I have continually griefs and anxieties
for you, without saying anything to you of them. Your
safety makes me tremble, and torments me incessantly ; and
there is scarcely a night that I do not dream seeing you in the
hands of the executioner. On the last occasion when you had
proposed going, not being without danger of being taken, I
imagined that it might be to pluck you from me, to drag
you immediately to sufferings ; and I was quite charmed that
you had refused it ; but this is quite different : Lady Jean
Douglas is of a house too illustrious for the Court to make
teasing inquiries and affront her by examining her closely
upon mere suspicions ; and they never could have positive
information on the subject. You could not run any risk with
her, and you ought to avail yourself of it," I was penetrated
with the most profound grief to hear her wish me to depart ;
and interrupted her, accusing her of inconstancy, and reproach-
ing her sharply for her indifference. " No," said she to me,
" my dear friend, you are mistaken. I am so little changed
in my sentiments for you that I have reserved a proof to give
you of my affection, stronger than you have had hitherto, and
which I do not wish you to mention till a favourable moment
occurs to put my project in execution. My resolution is taken
for a long time to follow your lot, by abandoning for you my
native country, my parents, and every thing which I hold
most dear, having waited for this that a safe opportunity
might arise to save you without danger, and it has actually
143
presented itself, such as I have desired, by Lady Jean
Douglas. I will disguise myself as a man, and cross in the
same packet boat with Lady Jean, without making it appear
that I know you in the passage. Come, then, let us go
immediately to procure dresses at the brokers, to be ready
to depart to-morrow morning." She adding " Providence
will give us bread, and I shall be content in living with you
on the cheer of peasants in preference to all the riches in the
universe." I embraced my adorable Peggy with tears in my
eyes. I assured her that I loved and adored her more than
my life, and that these same sentiments of tenderness and
affection which I had avowed for her till my last breath
would prevent me for ever from plunging her into ruin and
misery ; covering myself at the same time with the contempt
and indignation of her family ; that if I had a certainty of
having wherewithal to subsist upon independent of the world
the case would be different ; but that I did not know what
might become of me when I should be saved in a foreign
country, nor how to subsist in waiting till I was employed.
My dear love seeing me quite decided not to allow her thus
to throw herself over a precipice, spoke no more to me of my
departure ; and we passed the evening together with all the
concord and satisfaction, as usual, that two persons devoted
to one another could feel without reserve, by ties the most
inviolable and the most perfect and sincere friendship.
Having retired to my lodgings after supper, I laid me
down, but without being able to shut my eyes. A thousand
reflections lacerated my mind. I examined my position in
London, which, independently of danger, where I was ex-
posed continually to be taken, was too bad to assure me being
able to subsist for any long time, and having already proved
the harshness of my father, it was evident that funds would
fail me sooner or later. My Peggy had the prospect of being
one day rich, but she would not enjoy more than an indepen-
dent revenue. As it was my determination to betake myself
144
to Russia as soon as I should be saved in some foreign
country, where my Peggy would know that I had the most
powerful protection by the credit of my two uncles, who
were still alive, I nattered myself to be able there to obtain a
regiment in that service on my arrival in Russia, or soon
after, thus I hoped to find there a favourable lot to partici-
pate with her. Then I could make a voyage to England in-
cognito, to see her again, or to make her come to the foreign
country to whose service I might be attached. I thought,
further, that as it was for the interest of France on every ac-
count that the House of Stuart should be re-established on the
English throne, abolishing the ancient system of that nation
which had availed itself of this unfortunate house during
twenty-four years, as a set-off to the English, a political
stroke then practised, and which had not the least effect. She
would in the end be able to make an attempt seriously,
and to good purpose, in favour of Prince Edward, and then
I should return to England in a brilliant situation to rejoin
my Peggy. A thousand considerations made me resolve to
avail myself of this opportunity of saving myself with Lady
Jean Douglas, but the more fully that my dear friend wished
it quite independently of her own project.
I rose at an early hour, and went to breakfast at the house
of my Peggy. As soon as her uncle had left the saloon, to
dress, I communicated to her my nocturnal reflections, asking
at the same time for her advice, and to declare of herself
whether I should remain or depart. She rehearsed again
her project of accompanying me, but I protested solemnly to
her that I would never allow it, and that it was quite useless
to talk of it any more, that I would much rather perish upon
the rack than allow her to precipitate herself into an abyss of
ruin and destruction. Seeing that I did not yield, she said to
me that it was decidedly necessary that I should depart with
Lady Jean Douglas, and that she would sacrifice voluntarily
her own happiness and tranquillity to see me out of danger.
145
As the time pressed, not being able to reckon that Lady Jeau
Douglas would wait for me an instant at Huntingdon, after
my applying to M. Colville, he ordered me to go immediately
to the coach office, to secure a place in the diligence which
went in a day from London to Huntingdon, and which de-
parted next day at three o'clock in the morning. At the same
time that I should send forward my luggage, in order that I
might have nothing to occupy my mind, and to be all to my
Peggy. Her uncle having re-entered the drawing-room on my
return from the coach office, I communicated to him the offer
of Lady Jean Douglas, which I was about to avail myself of,
and that I should depart next day in the morning. He made
me his compliments, and testified to me a deep regret that I
should le going to leave them. I took leave of her uncle
immediately after dinner on leaving the table, and I went at
once to wait upon my charming Peggy, at the rendezvous we
had agreed on, to pass the little precious time which remained
to us, in some solitary walk out of the city, and not to lose an
instant of it. This was the more essential that a separation
so truly tender would not admit of witnesses, above all the
presence of her uncle, who never had the least suspicion of
our sentiments. After mid-day, which was the most sorrow-
ful we had ever known, it passed in vows and reciprocal oaths
of fidelity, and of an eternal constancy, notwithstanding that
it flew with the velocity of lightning. A hundred times I re-
tracted my resolution to leave her, and I had need of the forti-
tude of my charming Peggy to strengthen me in my resolution
to depart. She accompanied me to the coach office, where,
having remained together till half -past eight o'clock at night,
she mounted into a carriage. Inanimate and petrified as a
statue, I followed the vehicle with my eyes, and when she
departed completely, it was then that my resolution became
wavering and weak. My first movement was to run into the
room which -they had given me in the coach office, to take up
again my luggage, and cause it to be carried at once to my old
K
146
lodging at the house of the hairdresser, seeing that it was
impossible for me to support a separation. I decided not to
think any more of my life. Fortunately, reflection came to
my aid, before my luggage was removed, and I became
sensible that this step so singular would open the eyes of her
uncle and betray and plunge us into an embarrassment the
most distressing. Then I returned to the room and threw
myself upon the bed to await the departure of the diligence,
delivering myself up entirely to despair, and ready to sink
under the weight of my affliction, at the same time that I
passed under review all my misfortunes, which presented
themselves to my troubled mind in crowds, and painted in
vivid colours. If I had been able to foresee that this was
the last time that I should ever see her again, no considera-
tions in the world would have torn me from her, and rather
than have departed I would have met with firm step death,
with the most excruciating tortures, with which I was threat-
ened daily. Vain hopes ! vain illusions ! of which my life
has proved one continual train without intermission, as well
as a perpetual series of effects of adverse fortune. The
Supreme Being has given a fixed period for the dissolution
of all that he has created of matter, but if there is any im-
mortality, our two souls will be eternally re-united.*
The diligence departed about two o'clock in the morning,
and we arrived at Huntingdon at eight o'clock in the evening.
* It is a remarkable circumstance that notwithstanding all the profes-
sions of love which the Chevalier de Johnston e made to his adorable Peggy,
and the numerous descriptions of touching and pathetic scenes between them,
his admiration of her beauty, virtue, talents, and accomplishments, he never
after this period breathes a sigh for her loss, or even mentions her name,
content, as he himself says, that if there is a hereafter he is confident that
souls so knit together in love will be re-united in that happy state a pious
aspiration in accordance with all the other intimations with which the
Creator's works abound, and worthy of being laid to heart, and improved
amid the numerous vicissitudes of life to which our mortal state is exposed,
and of which the Chevalier had his share throughout his checkered career.
ED.
147
Lady Jean Douglas had departed the night before to proceed
to Harwich, not believing from the answer of M. Colville that
I would repair thither. I took the post the next morning,
hoping to join her before her arrival at Harwich ; but
the bad post horses had been so fatigued in running at full
speed, that I was obliged to stop all night at Newmarket. The
next day I found a luggage curricle, and I arrived before sunset
at an arm of the sea, which is about a league in breadth,
and from which you can see Harwich at the other side ; and
there was a frigate of about forty guns anchored in the
middle of the arm of the sea.
I addressed myself immediately to the master of the
barges, who kept an inn, to take me across the frith ;
but who, in spite of my prayers, threatenings, and offer to
recompense him generously, persisted in refusing it, telling
me that the government had prohibited him from taking any-
body across after sunset, on account of smuggling, and that
that vessel of war was upon the station expressly for pre-
venting it. I was furious and inconsolable to find myself in
a situation to lose the opportunity of Lady Jean Douglas
after the trouble and pains which it had cost me to resolve on
availing myself of it. I lowered my tone of threatening, in the
meantime, without gaining anything upon his obstinacy. He
answered me that the captain of the ship of war, who was
then drinking in his tavern with his officers, would put him
in prison if he did it, and his barge would be confiscated.
The captain of the vessel having heard my dispute with
the master of the barge, came out of the public-house to
question me. I was not put out. I answered that I was
a servant of Madame Gray the name which Lady Jean
Douglas had taken to travel with who ought to be at Har-
wich actually ready to embark in the first packet boat which
should depart for Holland ; that she had sent me to London
to execute her commissions, and that I was uneasy, fearing
that she should have departed before I should be able to
148
arrive there to give her an account, owing to the obstinacy
of the master of the barge, who would not allow me to pass,
neither by my offers to recompense him, nor by my threat -
enings to have him punished by making my complaint to the
Governor of Harwich. I begged the captain most earnestly
to be so good as exercise his authority, to compel him to do
so, and that I should not fail to make a faithful report to my
mistress of his kindness. He told me that he had seen my
mistress, Madame Gray, arrive the night before ; that she
appeared very amiable ; and that he would be delighted to
have it in his power to be of use to her ; but that he could
do nothing in regard to the master of the barge that man
having particular orders not to allow any one to pass the arm
of the sea after sunset. He added that she could not be
gone, as the wind was not favourable ; and he made offer to
take me with him in his shallop, and to put me on shore at
Harwich, as soon as he was aboard his vessel. I did not
hesitate an instant to accept his offer, and without the least
dread, I embarked in his shallop with boldness and hardihood,
telling him that my mistress would be most grateful to him
for his kindness and civility. I would have been lost without
recourse, if I had shown to him timidity or want of confi-
dence.
We were scarcely distant a pistol-shot from the shore,
when the captain made me observe in the shallop, one of the
midshipmen, named M. Lockhart, and asked me if I knew his
family in Scotland. I answered not, and that I had never
been in any other service than that of Madame Gray. I was
under anxiety, lest Lockhart had recognized me, through the
window of the cabin, while I was disputing, and that he had
told his captain of it. Having been a comrade at school with
his oldest brother, and often at the house of his father, M.
Lockhart of Carnwath, he could have been able very easily to
recognize me. He was about eighteen years old, and he had
been four years in the marine service. His older brother,
149
who was very rich, had been guilty of the same folly as a
thousand others in joining himself to Prince Edward. I suf-
fered cruelly by imagining that the captain of the vessel had
no other end in view, by his civilities and offer of his shallop,
than to conduct me, with little noise on board his ship, and
immediately to make me prisoner. The young Lockhart had
not known that I had been in the army of Prince Edward. It
was a thing too mysterious and equivocal, to see me disguised
under the habit of a domestic. I behoved in the meantime
to submit to my destiny. Heavens ! what a perverse and
wretched fate pursued and persecuted me to the last moment
that I arrived in Holland ! Was I to expect that a similar
adventure would await me at Harwich ? In proportion as
the shallop approached the vessel, I counted the minutes that
I had to be free before being garrotted and laid in irons, and
my heart palpitated terribly, although I always preserved a
tranquil exterior, and while I replied to the thousand ques-
tions which the captain asked me, with sang froid, calmness,
and presence of mind, without being disconcerted, I expected,
nevertheless, at every instant that his politeness would cease,
that the mask would be taken oif, and that the sailors would
have orders to seize me by the throat. This was an adventure
that I had experienced since the battle of Culloden which
occasioned me the most cruel sufferings and agitations, which I
could neither foresee nor prevent without giving up the saving
of myself in Holland with Lady Jean Douglas. I had often had
in my other awkward encounters some ray of hope of escaping,
whether by defending myself, or by the aid of my limbs, but
in this I was like a fish caught in a net. At length arrived at
the vessel, the captain, being on board, asked me to come and
drink a bumper to the health of my mistress. I regarded
this as the denouement of the piece. I answered him that I
feared I should find my mistress to bed before my arrival at
Harwich, and that I had to give her an account of her com-
missions, which were most pressing. He relieved all at once
150
my sufferings, crying to his seamen to land me at the town,
and not to forget his compliments to Madame Gray.
I found Lady Jean Douglas at the inn, and related to her
at once the obligation I was under to the captain of the vessel,
and the purgatory in which I had been plunged during the
passage, on account of his midshipman, the young Lockhart,
son of Carnwath, who certainly could not have failed but to
recognize me. She bestowed praises upon me for my firmness,
and laughed at the singularity of the feat, to have employed
the officers of King George to be accomplices in saving a
rebel, who had attempted to wrest the crown from their
king, to place it on the head of Prince Edward. She said to
me that I was certainly born fortunate, and that I should be
one day happy. I do not know what star presided at my
birth, but my life has only been a continual train of misfor-
tunes, of adversity, of pains, of misery, of flagrant injustices
in the service, which are too hard for a man of sensibility to
bear, and for an officer experienced in the profession of arms,
always ill at ease, and having only a pension from the king to
subsist on, of which they cut off the third part. I owe
nothing to fortune, which has always persecuted me the most
cruelly. Providence has often saved my life, as if by miracle,
but it has not been up to the present time to enjoy a well
being. I have no more ambition than to have wherewithal
to furnish me with a frugal subsistence, to have it assured to
me for the few short days that I may remain, and to pass them
with a tranquillity and serenity of soul, waiting the last period
of my life without fearing or desiring it. I should be content
with simple necessaries, and should be happy, in spite of per-
verse and unworthy fortune, which accords its favours
ordinarily to the most infamous and despicable of mortals.
The wind being contrary, we remained two days at Har-
wich before embarking ; and during this sojourn the Gover-
nor of that town, to whom Lady Jean Douglas had been
recommended, became our annoyance, on account of his polite-
151
ness and civilities. He had received orders from London to be
attentive in doing everything in his power to do her pleasure ;
and he came twenty times a-day, and at every hour, to ask of
her if she was not in need of his services. I always shut
the door of the room not to be surprised at table with my
mistress ; and it was quite necessary to leave it to wait until
I had had the cloth laid, and till the table was arranged for
three persons. Having opened the door to the Governor
when every thing was arranged, I took my place as domestic
behind the chair of Lady Jean Douglas, and her ladyship
having asked the Governor to taste her wine, I served him
at drinking. It was easy to see by his physiognomy that
he suspected there was some mystery ; but it would have
been disagreeable if he had lightly occasioned troubles to
a person of such illustrious birth, without being sure of his
mark. The first letter which I received from my charming
Peggy told me that there was a rumour abroad in London
that Prince Edward had been saved in Holland with Lady
Jean Douglas, disguised as a domestic. It was thus evident
that the Governor could have informed the Court of his
suspicions ; and it was fortunate that we were departed the
next day in the morning before he could have been in posses-
sion of an answer, to act on.
We arrived at Helvoetsluys in twenty-four hours. I met
in with a pleasant scene in the passage. The Chevalier
Clifton, who was in the packet boat, being acquainted with
M. Stuart, they made him come into the large room which
Lady Jean Douglas had hired for herself an\d her suite, and
his lackey and myself remained in a very small ante-chamber,
where we were very ill at ease, and obliged often to incom-
mode one another, which rendered us quite cross-grained,
and put us in bad humour ; being both in bed, our legs con-
tinually knocked against each other in the small space where
we were packed up, as it were in a prison ; above all, as
there were a good many passengers, and the weather rainy,
152
which made it difficult for them to get upon deck, this little
chamber was pent up to suffocation. Every one believing
the other to be truly lackeys, our answers were always sharp
and in a tone of contempt ; and certainly the scene would
have terminated by some explosion if the hour of dinner of
Lady Jean Douglas had not announced M. Clifton, a young
gentleman whom she had in her suite, who had been with
Prince Edward, whom she wished to make enter the chamber
to eat a morsel, M. Clifton said to her that he was in the
same condition, and that his lackey, M. Carnie, was an
officer in the Irish brigade, in the service of France. She
made us enter the chamber to dine, and we being informed
of our true state, we were both very much surprised, and
made reciprocally a thousand apologies for our ribaldries.
I was absorbed in a profound sleep when the packet boat
arrived at the quay of the city of Helvoetsluys, and every one
was already on shore, when they came to waken me. I de-
parted instantly from the packet boat with my eyes still half
asleep, and I ran with all my might to get out of the way as if
the captain and his crew would arrest me, not being able
to persuade myself that I was yet beyond the domination of
the English. Lady Jean having laughed heartily at seeing
me run, she cried to me that it was quite useless, and that
I was actually out of danger. I then awoke entirely. How
sweet and nattering a moment, beyond expression, to see
myself safe, after having been for six months between life
and death. It is necessary to have been in my situation
to know the excess of pleasure and satisfaction that I ex-
perienced in the first instances. Since the battle of Culloden
I had it always vividly impressed on my mind that I should
finish my days in sufferings on the scaffold. I felt then as
if raised from the dead.
After a stay of eight days at Rotterdam, I departed with
Lady Jean Douglas for the Hague, and there she fixed her
residence. As my resolution had been taken for a long time of
153
returning to Russia, I wrote to my uncle to let him know in
part of the misfortunes into which I was plunged; and begged
of him to inform his friends, the Count Grollovine and the
Prince Carakin, that I should be at St. Petersburg in the
beginning of June ; and to endeavour to engage them to
honour me still with their protection, in order that I might
obtain employment the moment of my arrival. If I had
followed that resolution it would not have been many years
before I should have been a general officer. I was ready to
depart to Russia when Lady Jean Douglas persuaded me to
defer my departure until they should receive positive news of
the fate of Prince Edward. Cruel and dismal Fortune,
which has deceived me through all my life by false appear-
ances *
M. Trevor, the English resident in Holland, having pre-
sented a note to the States-General demanding that they
* M. Machiavelli, in citing this passage from Tit. Livy, " adeo obcoecat
animos fortuna cum vim suam ingruentem refringi non vult," says, " For-
tune blinds everybody in a singular manner when she does not wish
to be impeded in her designs ; and there is nothing more true. Hence*
men ought not to be so much blamed or praised on account of their
adversity or prosperity, for one commonly sees some precipitated to their
ruin and others advanced to honours by the force and impulse of their lot,
Wisdom being of little importance against the misfortunes of the one, and
Folly as little against the felicity of the other. When Fortune premeditates
some great affair, she makes choice of some one of courage and capacity, in
a condition to discern when she presents to him a favourable opportunity ;
and, on the other hand, when she projects some great destruction, she has-
always her instruments ready to drive the wheel and aid her designs, and
if there is any one in a condition to counteract her measures, she turns him
aside and deprives him of all authority, leaving him impotent to do good,
&c. In the meantime, I have learned by the different circumstances of
history in general, that there is nothing more true than that men are able
to second their fortune, but not to resist it, and to follow the order of her
intentions, but not at all to defeat them ; nevertheless men ought not to
abandon them because they are ignorant of their issues, for her ways being
so unknown and so irregular might possibly in the end be for our good ;
thus we ought always to hope the best, and this hope is for the pur-
pose of sustaining us in the misfortunes and distresses which befal us.''
154
should arrest and deliver into the hands of the English all
the Scotch which were escaped into Holland, to the eternal
disgrace of that infamous Republic, they were sufficiently
mean to consent to it, contrary to humanity and the law of
nations. We were then a score of Scotch in Holland. M.
Ogilvie was arrested and sent to London ; the others departed
with all speed from this unworthy country ; and as it was
necessary for me to remain there to await till I should
find an opportunity to go to St. Petersburg, I ran to Leyden
to get myself registered in that University in quality of a
student of medicine; its privileges being so extensive that
the States -General could not dare to arrest a student of that
University but for the crime of murder. Having got myself
registered by means of some ducats which I paid to Professor
Gaubeus, I returned immediately to the Hague,' where we
learned in a few days, that Prince Edward was safe in
"There is not/' says Hobbes, " almost any human action which may not be
the commencement of a chain of consequences, so long, that there is no
human foresight that could be able to discover the end. Accidents, agree-
able and vexatious, are combined in a manner so indissoluble, that every
one chooses the agreeable, embracing also necessarily the unpleasant which
is joined to it, although he cannot foresee it." Cited by Cumberland, in Ids
" Philosophical Treatise on Natural Laws" Edin., 40, page 7. "Such are
the marvellous ways," says Robertson, "by which the Divine wisdom directs
the caprice of human passions, and makes them subservient to the accom-
plishment of his own designs." History of Charles F., vol. v., page 509.
" However, it is this caprice of passions which decides the fate of man, and
renders him happy or miserable for the rest of his days by a series of
effects ; and it appears that the will is not free in the choice of the part
we take, by a false appearance, taste, inclination, or depression," as says
M. Voltaire, " which determine us in our choice by a preference of one
thing rather than another, often without knowing why, of which the one
conducts to our happiness and prosperity, and the other to render us miser-
able by plunging us into an abyss of irremediable misfortunes." " Man,"
says M. Voltaire, in the Norman Orphan, " is not but a point in the uni-
verse, a grain of sand driven into the gulf of fortune, or into the abyss of
calamities. Our goods and our ills, our pleasures and our pains, often arise
from causes so imperceptible that it is only an eye much exercised that
can be able to perceive them."
155
France. The desire of seeing him again, and the hope of an
attempt still in his favour, made me abandon my resolution of
going to Russia ; and my fate was decided for the rest of my
days by my arrival at Paris towards the end of the year 1746.
The pleasures of that city made me immediately forget my
past troubles, and blinded me even to the future. I remained
there in a kind of lethargy, allowing opportunities of being
advantageously settled in Russia or in Spain to escape, in the
hope that the Court of France would still make some attempt
in favour of Prince Edward to re-establish his affairs in
Scotland ; and it was not till the Prince was arrested in
1748, and conveyed beyond the realm, in consequence of the
Peace of Ajx-la-Chapelle, that I opened my eyes, forced then
to think of the means of subsistence and of obtaining a situa-
tion. Madame the Marchioness of Mezieres Douairiere and
Lady Ogilvie having recommended me strongly to M. the
Marquis of Puysieulx, then secretary of state for foreign
affairs, that minister took me immediately particularly under
his protection, and granted me during the year 1749 two
thousand two hundred livres from the fund of forty thou-
sand livres which His Majesty had granted to be distributed
in annual gifts to the unfortunate Scotch, who had had the
good fortune of saving themselves in France, with the loss of
their estates, and to escape perishing on the scaffold in Eng-
land.
Seeing M. Puysieulx very well disposed in my favour, and
believing that I should still farther ingratiate myself in his
esteem and good graces, by entering into the service, in order
to render my youth useful, rather than live at Paris in
idleness, imder the bounty of the king, which this minister
had caused me to obtain, I begged him to let me have a
company of infantry at St. Domingo or at Martinique. All
the Scotch in the suite of Prince Edward having been placed
by M. the Count of Argenson with the same rank in the ser-
vice of France which they had with the Prince in Scotland,
156
and being an old captain in his army by my commission of
date the 21st of September, 1745, which the Prince had given
me the very evening of the Battle of Grladsmuir (Preston-
pans), as soon as we were on our return from Pin key House,
where he passed the night, I had every hope of receiving the
same treatment ; the more so as the Marquis of Eguille, the
ambassador of France to Prince Edward in Scotland, had
given repeated assurances to every one, that in case our expe-
dition should terminate unfavourably, all our commissions
from Prince Edward would be ratified by the King of France,
and that all those who should be saved in France should
have the same rank in the service of that Crown as they had
had in the army of that Prince in Scotland. But M. Rouille,
newly elected minister of marine, and more conversant with
the commerce of the Indies than with military affairs, in
place of granting me the request of M. Puysieulx, to have my
company, caused make out for me a commission as ensign in
the troops attached to the marine, at the Isle Royal. I refused
it at first with indignation and obstinacy, not being able to
endure the thought of that humiliating and revolting degra-
dation of an officer who had served well ; and it was not but
on the repeated orders of M. Puysieulx, joined to his assur-
ances not to leave me a long time shamefully with a sub-
altern's commission, after having served at the head of my
company during the whole expedition of Prince Edward
in Scotland, of which the progress we had there made, and
the battles we had gained, against forces greatly superior in
number, had attracted the attention and astonishment of all
Europe, that I consented in the end to accept it. I departed
forthwith to Rochefort, with full confidence in the promises
of M. Puysieulx, to wait there for my embarkment to the
Isle Royal, the worst place there is in the world.
I found at Rochefort three newly appointed officers, in
the Chevalier Montalambert, the Chevalier Trion, his cousin,
and M. Frene, who had obtained their complements also for
157
Isle Royal. Friendships are easily contracted among military
men, and the same destination attached us with mutual senti-
ments of friendship, so much the more that all the three were
of excellent character and of the sweetest society. Our em-
barkation having been ordered to be in the "Iphigenie," a mer-
chant vessel freighted for the king, belonging to M. Michel
Roderick, a ship master of Rochelle, we departed immediately
from Rochefort, and on our arrival at Rochelle, we found the
crew of the "Iphigenie" revolted, with the carpenter at their
head, who wished to make their declarations at the Admiralty
that the vessel was entirely uu seaworthy and not at all in a
state to continue the voyage. Roderick asked us to dinner,
and during the repast he never ceased to assure us that his
vessel was excellent, that if he should go himself to Louis-
bourg, of which he was a native, he should embark there-
in with his family, in preference to every other ship of
Rochelle, and that the bad reputation of the "Iphigenie" was
the effect of jealousy of his brother shipmasters, who had
seduced his crew and excited them to revolt. However
specious was the persuasive eloquence of Roderick, my com-
panions did not place entire confidence in his deluding words,
but I was his dupe in full. Thus could it ever be imagined
that there existed on earth a man so depraved a#d devoid of
all feeling of humanity who, for vile lucre's sake, could expose
nearly three hundred persons to perish ; having with us two
hundred recruits, besides a great many passengers and the
crew. Persuaded myself of the good faith of Roderick, I
had no great difficulty in bringing over my companions to my
opinion that it was only jealousy of the shipowners, who had
raised these disadvantageous reports of the " Iphigenie," and
having allayed the sedition of the sailors, we all embarked
on the 28th of June, 1750, and on the 29th, St. Peter's Day,
we weighed anchor at the break of day, and departed imme-
diately in fine weather and with a favourable wind.
The next day after our departure, having doubled Cape
158
Finisterre, we were convinced when too late of the perfidy
and bad faith of Roderick, and of the folly of which we had
been guilty in believing him. The " Iphigenie," which, ac-
cording to the declaration of the crew during their mutiny,
had made twelve feet of water per hour in the harbour of
Rochelle, being then in full sea, took twenty-four feet per hour ;
and Fremont, the captain of the vessel, -who could no longer
conceal the deplorable state of the ship, came to ask an ar-
rangement with us to have our soldiers continually to pump and
work the ship. The crew, which consisted only of forty sea-
men, good and bad, was not sufficient for it. We had the
half of our detachment of two hundred men, of which M.
Montalambert had the command, who took their turn with the
sailors, sixty of whom were ordered to the pump, to be re-
lieved at every quarter of an hour by the others on the muster
roll, by turns. A short time after, we had again a frightful
proof of the total rottenness of our ship by the loss of our niizen-
mast, which fell upon the deck, and did not fail in its fall to
drag after it our main-mast, the socket, rotten like the rest
of the ship, having given way. The foot of the mizen-mast
entered the cabin, plunging rapidly through the partition wall.
M. Montalambert, who at that moment was opposite, escaped
as by a miracle from being crushed, by jumping aside. It was
still more fortunate that this disaster happened to us at nine
o'clock in the morning, during very fine weather, and with a
light favourable breeze, which enabled the sailors to stop up
in a short time the rents of the hold, and the mast, and the
shrouds ; otherwise we would have run a very great risk of
perishing on the spot.
All our hopes of being able to escape death were in the
arms of our two hundred soldiers, and in the fine weather we
had, in place of hoping to have, in the fine season. Vain
hopes as to the weather ! We had continually to experience
blasts of wind the most violent, as if we had been in the very
midst of winter, one amongst the others, to the height of
159
mountains, carried off our top-masts and our sails, by shiver-
ing them as sheets of paper, and a swell of the sea drowned
our sheep and fowls, and our other provisions.
To complete our miseries, our water, which, by an atro-
cious and hateful rascality of Roderick, had been put into
old casks where there had been formerly wine, became so
completely corrupt in less than six weeks after our departure,
turned black as ink, thick as paste, and so truly infectious as to
be no longer fit to be drunk. But these were the least of our
misfortunes, compared to our frightful and deplorable situation,
having death always before our eyes, and the idea continually
impressed strongly on the mind that the "Iphigenie" should
plunge us some day into the deep sea ; and when the wind
was favourable, they durst not attempt to navigate the ship
but with very small sails, fearing lest our other two masts
should tumble as our mizen-mast had done. Thus we were
without a prospect of quickly seeing a favourable termination
to our cruel distresses and sufferings ; but on the contrary,
that they would be of long duration, and that we should be
for a long time between life and death.
Having experienced nine different squalls of wind since
the 29th of June, that we were at sea, heaven reserved us
still for the tenth, a furious tempest on the 10th of Septem-
ber, the most frightful. We had a dead calm during the
whole day of the 9th, but at midnight the wind began to
rise, and continued to increase until it became a perfect hur-
ricane, and of the most incredible violence. Foaming, it de-
scended the cabin at nine o'clock in the morning, to warn us
to prepare for death. It told us that there was no other hope
of saving ourselves and avoiding to be immediately swallowed
up by the sea but by paying our vows. It added that the
crew should come to make one to St. Nicholas, with a pro-
mise to chant a grand mass at Louisbourg, if it pleased God
to deliver us from the imminent danger in which we were ;
and it invited us to join ours to theirs, as our only
160
resource for preserving existence. Weak and melancholy
resource ! In the meantime we demanded from every one
a crown of six francs to be put into the contribution which
the sailors were making for this grand mass.*
I crawled upon the deck to see what state we were in. My
eyes were not able to support but for an instant the horribly
frightful views of the sea, which formed monstrous surges
like to mountains, sharp and moving, forming many tiers of
hills. From their summits rose up grand jets of foam, which
sparkled like the colour of the rainbow. They were so
elevated that our vessel seemed down in a valley at the foot
of the mountains, every surge threatening our destruction, and
to precipitate us to the bottom of these vast abysses, j It is
a beautiful and majestic horror which one would view with
admiration in looking upon it on the earth. We were at the
Cape without sails; the ship could not carry any. That
which rendered the rolling terrible was the ship being carried
in the water at every surge in a manner certainly calculated
to discover the keel on the opposite side. One must have
tried to make weigh without a sail of the misery of lightening
the ship, but she was carried away immediately by the wind
like a sheet of paper.
Having regained the cabin as fast as I could, but not
* " Bursts as a wave that from the clouds impends,
And swelled with tempests on the ship descends,
White are the decks with foam ; the winds aloud
Howl o'er the masts, and sing through every shroud ;
Pale, trembling, tired, the sailors freeze with fears,
And instant death on every wave appears."
Homer's Illiad, Book XV., Line 752, Pope's Translation.
f Having experienced violent squalls of wind in the Baltic Sea, in re-
turning from Russia on board of Walker's vessel, where the whole crew was
composed of English, the difference which I found between the English
sailors and the French sailors is that the English swear and work at the
same time till the last moment, and as long as they have the head above
the water, but the French have more confidence in their prayers than in
their arms. It appears to me that a middle course would not be amiss.
161
without difficulty, and without bruises, I there found 31.
Frene, who knocked with great handcuffs against the partition.
" Zounds," said he to me, " is it not terrible to perish in this
manner after having escaped an infernal fire at the assault of
Berg-op-zoom with the grenadiers of the regiment of Low-
endhal ? " M. Montalambert let fly tranquilly a torrent of
tears. The Chevalier de Trion, a young man of about twenty
years of age, who appeared less affected with our unhappy lot,
said to me that he had made his peace before our departure
from Rochefort. It seemed that the more one had lived, the
more ought one to regret to quit life. This would have been
a beautiful subject for a painter, to represent the contrasts in
the characters, which even the same event affected differently.
I was resigned to die, as I had always been in all my misad-
ventures during the time that I had fled the scaffold ; that is
to say, submitting myself with patience to a fatal destiny
which there was no means of evading, sooner or later ; for
human nature trembles at its destruction in health and in cold
blood.* I had a great appearance of tranquillity outwardly,
but the mind was at the same time lacerated and tormented to
imagine what would be the last fall of the curtain, by which
we were shortly going to be enlightened. They came to in-
form us that Fremont had fallen down dead, but this was only
a fainting fit, which passed away at the end of a quarter of
an hour. It was the ambition of this foolish animal to com-
mand a ship, which had plunged us into this disaster ; and he
was as lazy and without spirit in dangers, as he was insolent
and impertinent when it was fine weather.
I passed all the day reading the Psalms of David, and
* Man, let him be who lie may, is never glad to die, when he is a We
without disgrace to prolong his days, which are not a burden to him.
Virtue, labour, love, duty, glory, and patriotism, may well enable him to
face death, but he retains always at the bottom of his heart, that natural
repugnance which makes him tremble, as it were against himself, when he
sees close to him the fatal moment, which is to deprive him of life. The.
most intrepid man will not deny me this, if he is sincere.
L
162
plunged at the same time, into continual reflections on a future
existence and the immortality of the soul. I recollected what
had been said by Wollaston, who appears to me the most
satisfactory of all those I have read upon the subject, of
which no mortal shall ever be able to unveil the darkness that
covers it.*
* " This faculty of thought/' says Wollaston, in his Outline of Natural
Religion, " which many persons talk to us of, as a quality added by the
almighty power of God to divers systems of Nature disposed to receive it,
ought necessarily, although they always call it so, to denote a substance
given to the faculty of thought ; for the faculty of thought of itself alone is
not sufficient to form the idea of soul, which is itself endowed with many
other faculties, such as are those of perceiving, of reflecting, of comparing,
of judging, of weighing the consequences, and of reasoning, of wishing, of
communicating motion to the body, of preserving by'its presence the exer-
cise of the animal functions, and of giving life. This is why all that which
is added to matter ought to be endowed with these other faculties ; and I
leave to people who are not hindered the care of deciding, if the faculty of
thought and the other faculties of which we have made the enumeration,
are simply the faculties of one faculty, or if they are not rather faculties of
a substance, which being by their own admission added to matter, ought
consequently to be different. But matter can neither think nor was made
to think ; for when the faculty of thought is capable of being added to
a system of matter, without being joined with an immaterial substance,
still the body of man is not such a system, because it is certain that it does
not think, and that it is organized in a manner to transmit impressions which
it receives of sensible objects even to the brain, where it is beyond doubt
that there resides that which perceives these impressions and reflects on
them ; that is why that which in the brain perceives, thinks, wishes, &c.,
ought to be the system of matter to which is added the faculty of thinking ;
that the inhabitant is a thinking substance intimately united to some
material vehicle very delicate which resides in the brain. The whole i.s
reduced to this First, the soul of man is a substance which thinks, which
is clothed in a material vehicle, or rather that it is united to it, and which is
as it were inseparably mixed with it, I was going to say almost incorpo-
rated. Second, This soul and this vehicle act in concert, and that which
makes an impression upon the one makes also upon the other. Third, The
soul is contained in the body, in the head, or in the brain, by some sympathy
or attraction which is between it, and its material receptacle, until some
evil accident, some disease, &c., causes the body to fall to ruins, destroy
the dwelling of the soul, interrupting the course of natural coherence,
which exists between it and its receptacle, or that its tendency is perhaps
changed into some antipathy which force has involved it in. Fourth, By
163
Towards three o'clock after mid-day, a wave stove in the
port holes of the cabin and tumbled upon the Chevalier Trion,
who was sleeping in his bed the length of the windows. As
his bed was soaked with the sea water, I made him lie down
with me in the cabin, which they had given me, at my entry
into the saloon. It was with difficulty that we could get our
means of this vehicle, the momentum and impressions are communicated
through all parts of the body. Prop. 8, The soul of man subsists after dis-
solution of the body ; that is to say, it is immortal. If it is immaterial, it is
indivisible, and is in consequence incapable of being destroyed as bodies are.
Such a body cannot perish but by annihilation ; that is to say, it will always
subsist and always continue to be, yet a being capable of being annihilated,
but not annihilating itself by a particular act ; this act by which a substance
shall be reduced to nothing requires without doubt the same power as that
by which nothing is changed into something. To introduce a body of mat-
ter endowed with the faculty of thought, or actually thinking, this is to
introduce a body of matter endowed with a new property and contrary to
matter ; and this is to introduce a new kind of matter, as essentially
diff ereut from common matter, and deprived of the faculty of thinking
as some kind let it be what it may, differs from its opposite in the shelter
of predicaments, and as the body itself differs from the spirit ; for a being
endowed with the faculty of thinking and another which is deprived of it,
differ as essentially as corporeal beings differ from incorporeal ; if this is so,
thinking matter ought to continue to think. Why does not our soul perceive
exterior objects during sleep, or during the time of fainting ? It is because
the tubes have become impracticable ; that all the avenues are shut, because
the nerves being deranged and rendered in some manner useless, are for
some time not in a condition to transmit or make known to the soul the im-
pressions made by them ; we are able to deduce the immortality of our souls
and the nature even of God ; for if he is, as no one can doubt, a perfect
being, he cannot as such make anything contrary to right and perfect
reason," (and we may add that he cannot cease to be a sentient as well as a
thinking being, which he has been from all eternity and must ever remain.
ED.) "It is therefore impossible that he should be the cause of a being
or the condition of a being, whoso existence should be repugnant to reason ;
or which comes to the same thing, it is impossible that he should act unrea-
sonably with the beings which depend upon his power. If we are of the
number of these beings, and if the mortality of our soul is repugnant to
right reason, this is sufficient to make us convinced that it is immortal,
or he who made the soul of man mortal must confess one of two things,
either that God is a being unreasonable, unjust, and cruel ; or that every-
one in this life, which is subject to adversity, has not participated hi
164
soldiers to remain at the pump, and in fact these poor unfor-
tunates had much to suffer, for at every instant the waves
gushed over them with violence, and often swept them into
the sea. The Chevalier Trion made constant bulwarks be-
tween the decks to cause them mount on high, the Serjeants
at this critical moment having lost all their authority over
a greater proportion of misery than of felicity ; to advance the first of these
propositions would be to contradict a truth which I flatter myself to have
put beyond doubt. I can, nevertheless, add here that this would be to enter-
tain so unworthy and so impious a notion of the Supreme Being that no
person would wish to entertain it, without a very great foundation for the
last of men, and that the man who defends this opinion knows it to be
false ; for he cannot fail to see and recognise many and incontestible ex-
amples of the justice and goodness of God, of which no one, however, could
see one, if cruelty and injustice entered into the character of the Supreme
Being, since he has the power perfectly to satisfy his wishes, and that he is
a being uniform in his nature. To allow the second member of the dilemma,
this would be to give the lie to the universal history of the world, and even
to the internal feelings of all men. Let us consider maturely the terrible
effects attending wars, &c." (See page 8.) "How could one, then, excul-
pate the justice and the reason of the being, upon which these unfortunate
creatures depend, and who would make them by annihilating them suffer
losses so considerable, if there is not any future life, where there will be a
just reward for all their past troubles ? We draw, in short, from this argu-
ment these incontestible consequences, if the soul is mortal, or it is not from
God upon whom it should be dependent, or if this God is unreasonable, or
if there never has been a man whose sufferings in this world not having
been through his own fault, having surpassed the pleasures which he has
enjoyed, or certainly these three propositions are equally untenable there-
fore the soul is immortal." J. J. Bourlamaqui says, to prove the immor-
tality of the soxil " Such is the nature of expediency, and that one truth
little known by itself acquires force by its natural combination with other
truths more known. So natural philosophers doubt not that they have found
the true when an hypothesis happily explains all the phenomena, and an
event little known in history does not appear doubtful, when one sees that it
serves as the key and the sole base of many other events more certain."
(Principles of Natural Right.) "It is flattering to imagine the immortality of
the soul, but alas ! as says Diderot, when one has placed human recognition
in the balance of Montaigne, one is not far from taking his estimate. For
what do we know, that it is but matter ? By no means. What is it but
spirit and thought ? Still less. Is it motion, space, duration ? Not at all.
-Question mathematicians, in good faith, and they will confess to you that
their propositions are all identical." Letter upon Saunders.
165
ern^; and it was not but by threatening and maltreating
them that it was possible to obtain the end. They always
answered, " that to perish was but to perish, but it was better
to perish on the quarter deck than to be swept away by the
waves, or crushed to death on the deck." We had many of
our soldiers wounded, the surges of the sea coming on deck
with astonishing force, throwing them often from one side of
the ship to the other.
Towards six o'clock at night, our carpenter, who was a
pleasant original, and a true harlequin, but very active and
laborious at work, having remained working before the door
of my cabin, where I was lying, in bed with the Chevalier
Trion, having asked him if he had anything new to com-
municate, he answered us " Ah ! yes, gentlemen, great
news very great news ! The fore part of the ship is open,
and the water is actually entering it in bucketfuls ; the
soldiers having wrought a long time at the pumps without
being able to deliver it, it is at length broken ; and there fell
upon the deck a wave which covered their clothes with sand.
Thus, gentlemen, we shall be quickly at the devil ; in less
than an hour we shall all drink of the same cup." It is
singular that there are characters capable of pleasaDtry even
to the last moment of life ; while there are other persons whom
the sight of danger deprives of all sensibility, and who are
dead a long time before it comes to pass.
The depression and weariness of my spirits, absorbed all
the day in reflections the most serious, made me assume a
drowsiness which I wished greatly to encourage. My con-
science as a Chinese author defines it, that internal and
concealed light, page 34, &c., Ext. not reproaching me
with enormous crimes, but only such as the heat and giddi-
ness of youth would occasion, through thoughtlessness, I said
to the Chevalier Trion that I should be most happy if I could
make the passage to the other world sleeping ; that I wished
to try it. I took leave of him, embraced him, and having
1G6
turned my face to the partition wall, I fell immediately into
the most profound sleep, without being interrupted by the
frequent comings and goings out of my cabin which the
Chevalier Trion occasioned in order to animate and make our
soldiers work ; and I continued in one sound sleep from half-
past six o'clock at night, till seven o'clock the next day in the
morning. On my awakening I believed myself more in the
other world than in this. The Chevalier immediately said to
me, how happy I was; that through the whole night they
expected the moment when the vessel would sink to the
bottom ; and that I had escaped greatly the cruel sufferings
which I would have experienced had I been awake; that
they had bound the ship round with cables to prevent her
from breaking asunder altogether ; that as soon as the car-
penter had repaired the pump, the soldiers, who had wrought
all the night like madmen, had come in the end to free her ;
that the wind and the sea had much abated ; and- for once
they believed us out of danger. There is only but a very
short space between pain and pleasure. Fine weather, with
a favourable wind, which at ten o'clock in the morning
succeeded the tempest, revived our spirits immediately,
fatigued by their sufferings, which they forgot more easily
than these enjoyments.
We had often doubted whether Fremont was an ignorant
or a bad sailor ; but in the end we were convinced that his
ignorance would have cost us dear. M. Lion, who was
second in command of the " Iphigenie," told us that by his
journal we were very near to the land of the Royal Island,
though by the journal of Fremont we were yet distant from
it two hundred leagues. This gave us uneasiness ; but in
reality it would have been a very melancholy fate to perish
among the rocks, with which all this coast is surrounded, at
the moment when we had been saved from the tempest. I
determined to pass the whole night on deck ; and I said to my
companions, that as they had watched for my safety during
167
the time that I had enjoyed a profound sleep the past night, I,
in my turn, would do the same for them. We were all much
more inclined to believe M. Lion than the other; and we
begged him to remain on deck with me till the break of
day. It was a very fine starlight night, without the moon ;
but there was a clearness all the night in the heavens like a
twilight, to make it possible to distinguish at a considerable
distance. M. Lion, having placed a seaman on the poop of
the ship to look out continually a-head, oh, heavens ! what
was our joy when this sailor, towards two o'clock in the
morning of the 12th of September, cried to us that he saw
land. I ran there with M. Lion, and in less than ten
minutes we saw it very distinctly at a distance of about
three hundred toises. They immediately tacked about to port
the helm, and I descended quickly into the saloon to convey
the good news to my comrades, awakening them as agreeably
as they had done me the night before. When it was great
daylight, Fremont, who had already made one voyage to Louis-
bourg, pretended to recognise this land perfectly as Indienne,
a settlement of the Royal Isle, about six leagues north of
Louisbourg ; and he bore towards the south. Having all
reason to believe that we should easily reach Louisbourg, in
the course of the day, we got on our things, holding ourselves
quite ready to land ; but at three o'clock in the afternoon,
being at the entry of a port which Fremont took for the port,
so long time ardently desired, he cried to a boat which passed
near to us, if this was not the port of Louisbourg ? They
answered by demanding the name of the ignorant sot who
commanded the ship who mistook Louisbourg for the port of
Toulouse, a settlement about twenty leagues to the south of
Louisbourg. Thus they knew but too late, that it was the
port of Louisbourg, which we saw in the morning, but which
a fatal destiny had put a blind before Fremont's eyes, and
which drove us to despair. I insisted much with Montalam-
bert to land at the port of Toulouse with our detachment,
168
and make the road by land ; but Fremont affrightened him
by declaring that if he took that course, he would be respon-
sible for the cargo. We were in the meantime quite in a
condition to make it, viewing the vile state of the ship and
the danger to which we were exposed, if we were driven for-
ward by an adverse wind. In short, having throughout the
whole night fine weather, and a light favourable wind, we
entered into the port of Louisbourg the next morning, the
13th of September, to the great astonishment of all the in-
habitants of that city, who believed that we had perished. A
small vessel left at the same time that we did from. Rochelle,
on board of which there were embarked Madame Hagette
and two officers of the colony, which had had a passage of
fifty days in place of sixty and sixteen, that we were on
the sea, had reported to them the bad state of our ship ;
and the quays were swarming with people who looked with
surprise and admiration at the dilapidated state of the
" Iphigenie," coming in front of us to congratulate us on our
fortunate deliverance. The next day, the crew of our vessel
made a procession quite naked, and having nothing but their
shirts on their backs, all the way to the church, where grand
mass was chanted, without sparing any expense, in conse-
quence of their vows during the storm. They wished to take
back the " Iphigenie " to France, but the crew having com-
plained to the Admiralty, they caused her to be inspected,
and she was condemned immediately to be cut in pieces.*
* We were a long time at Louisbourg before being informed of the
powerful patronage of the "Iphigenie." Koderick was in partnership with
M. Prevot, commissary of ordnance at the Koyal Isle, and then with M. Perte,
first commissioner of the marine chamber. Hence it is not astonishing that
the inspectors at Eochefort shut their eyes to the condition of the ships,
which they freighted for the king ; and the unfortunate sailors would have
been obliged to return to France in this rotten ship, if the officers of the
admiralty had not had more uprightness and humanity than the owners,
who, supposing the "Iphigenie" sunk to the bottom of the sea, would have
had nothing lost but the ship and cargo, the whole being insured to their
full value, perhaps even to a profit. What monsters does the love of gain
produce !
169
As to Fremont, who had not ceased to give us his imper-
tinence during the whole voyage, the first time that he landed
on the shore, I caused him make another procession, along the
whole length of the quay, with cudgel strokes, to the great
divertisement of all the corps of officers of the Royal Isle,
but above all to the great satisfaction of my companions of
the voyage, who had partaken daily with myself of his fool-
ishness and insolences. This was a laughable scene. He
drew at first his sword, but whether it was that he feared
that I should break the blade of it with my stick, which was
very thick and weighty, or whether that he dreaded receiving
the strokes upon his face every time that I lifted the baton,
he made a half turn to the right, presenting to me his shoul-
ders, with the best grace in the world, to receive them, which
certainly ought to have felt the force of them for a long
time. I have always seen impertinence and cowardice inse-
parably together ; for a man truly brave is inoffensive, and
never insults any one, although violent when people do him
injuries. M. Coppinot, staff-major of Louisbourg, who saw
us at the beginning, retired aside to leave me at liberty, and
did not return to order me to give up, until he believed that
Fremont had got enough. I applied the strokes with a great
deal of force and with good will, as he was the cause of all
the bad blood which we had in this long and painful voyage,
by concealing from us at Rochelle the miserable condition of
his vessel, so thoroughly rotten that they would have been
able to pierce the timbers with their fingers.
Before a year's sojourn at Louisbourg, I was plainly con-
vinced of the folly I had committed in accepting a commission
of ensigncy, by my submission to the order of M. Puysieulx r
and by the hope of patronage. The despatches of the court
having arrived, there was no mention in them of rny promo-
tion, and M. Puysieulx having quitted the department of
foreign affairs, his successor, M. de St. Contest, had not im-
mediately put me on the list of annual allowances granted by
170
His Majesty to the Scotch in the suite of Prince Charles
Edward. What a strange lot ! Having been attached to the
artillery, with my company during the expedition in Scotland,
in a fixed escort, although my commission of captain did not
make mention of that appointment, Prince Edward, in the
statement which he gave to the Court of France of his offi-
cers, having given me the title of captain of artillery, I received
twelve hundred livres in 1746 ; I had it augmented in 1749
to two thousand some hundred livres ; and in 1751 I found
myself at Louisbourg, the only one of the Scotch fully re-
duced to an Ensign, through the ignorance of M. Rouille of
military affairs, who had sent to the Royal Isle incompetent
officers to occupy the vacant companies and lieutenancies,
while he denied me the justice of ratifying my commission of
captain by Prince Edward, which the Count of Argenson
had conceded to all my comrades, not having, at the same
time, but four hundred and twenty-four livres per annum,
which did not suffice for paying my lodging in the most mis-
erable garret of Louisbourg. Blind Fortune moves itself in
a singular manner, and drives us in spite of ourselves to the
lot which she has destined for us. If I have not succeeded
in procuring for myself a livelihood to the end of my days, I
cannot accuse myself of an error in judgment, in the means
that I employed for attaining it ; for when I recall all the
past, I do not see that I could have been able to act other-
wise than I have done ; and if it were to do over again, I
would follow the same illusions, as having the appearance of
being the most reasonable. Man does not know to judge
and take the best possible course, under appearances the
most clearly favourable, to conduct him to the results which
he proposes to himself, if by effects, whimsical and impos-
sible to foresee, the road he takes, founded upon probability,
appears to be the best for conducting to the result, turns out
quite the contrary, what can he do but look upon him-
self as a grain of sand driven by Chance, that unjust
171
tyrant which governs and disposes at his caprice all the
actions of men. The climax of the misery which must
necessarily actually pursue me even to the end of my days,
and which it is beyond the power of fortune itself to remedy
now at my age, was to have consented to take a commis-
sion of ensigncy in 1750 under the reiterated promises of M.
Puysieulx, to watch continually to procure me a company
without delay; M. Rouille being then, according to all ap-
pearance, the only minister of all the Courts of Europe who
could have disgraced the commission of Prince Edward, by
thus degrading a captain of his Scottish army, the progress
of which against the whole united troops of England produced
the astonishment and admiration of all Europe.
How could I fail to have had confidence in the promises of
M. Puysieulx after his having given me proofs the most con-
vincing of his esteem and good graces ? He had given me in
1749 two thousand two hundred livres from the funds granted
to Scotchmen ; and this minister was so well disposed in my
favour, that if I had demanded of him a permanent situation
of five hundred livres per annum out of this fund, he would
have granted it to me readily. Might it not naturally be
believed, that the desire which I had shown to render my
youth serviceable to the king and the country, deserved much
rather rewards than punishments? Is it an equal merit in a
man to pass his days at Paris in idleness and pleasure, as I
would have been able to do with my pension on the Scot-
tish list, or to embrace a situation the most painful, like that
of a military man, who performs well his duties ; exposed
continually to dangers of all kinds, his body overwhelmed with
excess of fatigues, and his constitution ruined by bad nourish-
ment, joined to a thousand other inconveniences which
necessarily follow the hard work of war ? Could I have ever
imagined that in the service of France one would see lazy
officers, who do no other service but pillage and rob the
king, and being enriched by rapine, are received with open
172
arms in the bureau at Versailles ; at the same time that the
son of a pastry cook, and another son of a hairdresser, are
made to pass right over officers who have served with dis-
interestedness, who have only occupied themselves continually
for the good of the service, and to render themselves useful?*
I confess that I could have never been able to form an idea
of the service of France, such as I have experienced it ;
having always believed that honour, sentiments, and a great
knowledge of the military art, were the only means of suc-
ceeding in any service of the world.
M. Herbiers having obtained leave from the Court to be re-
lieved, the king's vessel "Happy," commanded by the Chevalier
Caumont, was sent to Louisbourg with the Count de Raimond,
to replace him in the government of the Royal Isle, and to
bring him back to France. Seeing the forgetf ulness and ne-
glect of my patrons to procure me a suitable situation, joined
to the impossibility of being able to live at Louisbourg upon
four hundred and twenty-four livres of salary, this worthy and
gentlemanly man, who had received me into his friendship,
having taken upon himself to cause me to enter into an agree-
ment with my new governor, to return with him to Europe in
the "Happy," obtained at the same time the permission of M.
Caumont for me to embark at once ten or twelve days before
the vessel should sail, in order to repair the bad fare which
I had had during a year at Louisbourg, which ordinarily
consisted during the winter solely of cod-fish and hog's lard,
and during the summer, fresh fish, bad rancid salt butter, and
bad oil. Cross adventures were familiar to me, without fortune
ever having mixed with them the fortunate ! Two hours
after I had gone on board, at the instant that we were about
to place ourselves at table for supper, the vessel was almost
blown up in the air ; and in a little, if there had been the
least wind, we would have never been able to avoid 4hat dis-
mal fate. A vessel at anchor beside the " Happy 5> had taken
* Messieurs Berranger et Coutereau.
173
lire, laden with rum and oil, and in an instant the ship was
all in flames, like the great fire of a furnace. All the ships'
boats of the port were collected together quickly with grap-
pling irons to haul back the ship on fire, and make her get to
a side, beyond the reach of communicating the fire to others ;
but it was with difficulty that we were saved, this ship having
passed alongside our board quite close by. If the grappling
irons had been awanting, we were gone.* We being replaced
at table as soon as the danger was passed, the dear and
worthy man, M. Herbiers, told us that during the time that
this catastrophe lasted, he could not help thinking continually
of me, how it should happen unfortunately for me to embark
precisely at the point of time to encounter death.
We sailed from Louisbourg in the month of August, 1751,
and we arrived in fifty days in the bay of Rochelle, having
experienced in the passage but one squall of wind, which
endured forty-eight hours, and which alarmed greatly the
officers of the ship ; but as it was very, far below for the most
part those which I had experienced the year before, in the
"Iphigenie," the vessel being good and in a condition to resist,
I was not otherwise disquieted than by the interruption which
it occasioned to our good cheer ; for while it lasted it was
impossible to cook, and we were reduced to bacon, with
biscuits, in place of fresh bread, f
* It is incredible the disorder that prevailed in the vessel during this
alarm. Some crying to let go the cable, others to cut it, one heard a hun-
dred voices with different orders, and nobody doing anything, the crew not
knowing whom to obey. It appears to me that if I commanded a vessel in
such imminent danger with a pair of pistols before me, I should cause per-
fect silence be observed, to enable the orders of the captain to be heard and
executed.
f There were twenty officers on board the "Happy," which earned
sixty four guns, and one above all called Bordet, a great sailor, but a great
drunkard, and always tipsy from seven o'clock in the morning ; the others
were very different from him, and had so great a deference for him and
confidence in his knowledge, that they made him mount upon the deck,
to command the working of the ship even during a gale of wind, but not
being steady on his legs, they caused him sit down upon an arm chair, from
174
Having arrived at Paris, I did my best to get myself re-
instated upon the list of bounties granted to the Scotchmen of
the suite of Prince Edward, being then well persuaded of the
great folly I had been guilty of in quitting it ; but M. St.
Contest always replied to all my patrons, that they ought to
break the neck of this young man, who would be able to rise
in the service. Seeing my small hope of success, I turned all
my efforts to get a company ; and M. Rouille was spiritedly
solicitous in my favour, through M. Puysieulx, Prince Con-
stantine of Rohan, now Cardinal, the Prince Montauban his
brother, Lord Thomond, and by Lord Marechal, who was the
friend of my uncle in Russia, and then ambassador at Paris
of the King of Prussia. If I had had then as perfect a know-
ledge of cabinets as I have since had by experience, I should
have been much better able to succeed, with much less pa-
tronage ; but I did not then know all the power of clerks, the
beaten tracks which it was necessary to follow in order to
obtain anything, and the irresistable assistance of petticoats,
which forces and opens all the barriers to fortune. Knowing
even this marvellous key, through which to obtain all, well
founded or ill founded, I never found myself the better of
it. M. Rouille gave them all the assurances possible to grant
their request in my favour, and M. de la Porte assured me at
the same time that I should find my commission waiting me
whence lie gave forth his orders like an Emperor on his throne. It is incred-
ible the magnificence of the table on board the French men-of-war, served
with all the elegance that it is possible to do on land, which the captains of
English vessels would never be able to imitate, for as soon as they receive
orders to sail with the first favourable wind, of which they render an account
to the Admiralty, which they do daily in all the ports of England, they are
not allowed to remain longer, as the French ships are obliged to do, some
times during three weeks, to wait for provisions to the table ; and the
English captains are often sufficiently unfortunate as to be obliged to con-
tent themselves with salt beef and bacon like the sailors, with this difference,
that the captains have the choice of the pieces. It is true that the Com-
missioners of the Admiralty take great care that the provisions of the ship.s
should be of good quality, well conditioned, and in good case.
175
at Louisbourg on my arrival there. This minister sent me at
the end of May, an order to depart for Rochf ort ; and M. St.
Contest having given me a supply to defray in part the ex-
pense of my voyage, I proceeded thither immediately, but
with no confidence in their promises, for I had believed the
same before, in the preceding year, and once deceived, I with
difficulty relied upon them ; but I could not see any other
course to follow but return to Louisbourg. If I had been
possessed of money, it is not doubtful that I should have then
quitted France to seek for service elsewhere ; but the defi-
ciency of money formed chains impossible to sever, binding
continually to an unfortunate man his unlucky fate, and this
is one way that fortune takes to overwhelm and immolate its
victims.
I embarked at Rochelle towards the end of June, 1752,
on board the " Sultan," a merchant vessel, of 300 tons,
freighted for the king, and commanded by M. Roxalle, a man
of spirit and education, very gentlemanly, and altogether a
contrast to Fremont ; he, and three other passengers on
board, M. Pensence, captain at Royal Isle, M. Lory, an
officer of Canada, and M. Gaville, son of the commissary of
Rouen, who was stationed at Louisbourg, having been before
in the French Guards. We had a very long and very annoy-
ing passage, owing to bad weather and contrary wind, which
prevailed almost continually without interruption, having
been twenty-four days at sea. I believe that it was impos-
sible for the elements to form a tempest more frightful than
that which we had in the " Iphigenie " on the 16th of
September, 1750 ; but we experienced another still more
furious on the 2nd of September, in the "Sultan," of which M.
Roxalle, who had passed forty years of his life at sea, had
never seen one equal to it. To such a degree had this tem-
pest destroyed the tackling of the ship, that he left it on his
return to Rochelle. If it had happened to us in the " Iphi-
genie," that rotten ship never would have been able to resist
176
it for a moment, and we would certainly have perished with-
out remedy. But the " Sultan " was a new ship, which had
not been before but one voyage to the coast of Guinea. The
description which M. Roxalle set down in his journal of this
tempest, having appeared to me curious, I shall enter a copy of
it, which behold. " From Friday at mid-day, 1st, to Satur-
day mid-day, 2nd September, 1752, the wind S.S.E. to S.W.,
till eight o'clock at night, steering from W.N.W. two degrees
west, making in this route sixteen leagues ; the wind then
at S.W., and increasing, we crowded all our sails, and placing
from the try-sail to the fore-mast, pulled the mizen-mast
below. The wind always continued to augment with a
violence beyond all expression, the sea being horribly rough
and blazing, passing over us, seemed as if in burning flames.
I never, in my lifetime, saw such frightful weather, and, at the
same time, so appalling. We have always, with the help and
succour of the Lord, sustained aloft our ship, comporting itself
as well as we could have hoped in this terrible weather. And
not daring to bear away under mizen-mast for fear of being
engulphed by the sea if we had a wind abaft. At ten o'clock
the violence of the wind drove our main-sail to the wind, we
having, thank God, had time to splice it to the rope's end.
She tossed much, but we saved her. We had the yard pulled
upon the socket. At an hour and a-half after midnight, the
wind carried off our mizen-mast. She began to glide by the
edge of the sheet, the rest followed. There only remained
but the foot ropes. The jib, the false jib, the peroguet, would
have shared the same fate, although they were very Avell
secured; the violence of the wind having shattered and carried
them away, and the yard-arm had been broken through the
middle ; hence this last sail being gone it weighed down
cruelly our mizen-mast. I wished to cut it ; the hatchet was
already lifted up, but the wind having entirely torn the whole
sail, we had, by the grace of God, preserved our mast.
About three o'clock, a blow of the sea stove in the window
177
of the starboard of the great cabin, and shipped a great deal
of water aboard, falling upon M. J , who was there in
his bed. At four o'clock, our rudder was broken ; we put a
capstan on the top of the helm in the main cabin to hold it,
and we had, thank God, another bar-arm fixed. At six
o'clock in the morning, the wind began to be less terrible ;
and soon after it abated. At present (mid-day) we hope the
squall of wind is at an end ; but we ought to attribute that
the goodness and mercy of God has saved us in the imminent
peril in which we found ourselves involved. May it please
Him to continue, by his abundant grace, to have us in His
holy keeping. The half of our fowls were found drowned in
their cribs. We have had the try-sail since eight o'clock in
the evening from N.W. to N.E."
Being lying in my bed in the main cabin, where there
was no light, I heard towards midnight the voice of M. Pen-
sence, who in tumbling, cried out that he was killed. I called
to him several times, and receiving no answer, I believed that
he was dead, or had fainted. As his servant could not help
him, having been lamed a little by a similar fall, I got out of
bed to fetch a lantern in order to be able to assist him, but I
was rather surprised to see him upon deck, and distinguish
him under the poop, with M. Roxalle, who there held by the
beams of the awning with both his hands, when a wave of the
sea fell upon my head and made me drink salt water in abund-
ance. I returned immediately to the main cabin as I best
could, and in great wrath, and having changed my linen
and clothes, I returned to bed, fully determined that if Pen-
sence should break his neck a thousand times, I should not
budge again. He was an amiable youth, and so pleasant
that his exclamations sometimes made me laugh, in spite of
our horrible situation. He had come into France the year
preceding to obtain the Cross of St. Louis, with the design of
retiring from the service, to live in his own country, and the
Court granted it to him on condition that he should come back
M
178
to receive it at Louisbourg. During the danger, Pensence
repeated incessantly " Cursed and execrable cross ; if I had
been able to foresee the horrible position in which we find our-
selves, all the orders of Europe should have never tempted
me to embark. What have I to do with this miserable cross?
Would I not have been able to live peaceably and happily in
Gascony without it ! " In short, as long as the storm lasted,
these were the same lamentations and regrets. The second
drenching which I had, through the windows of the great
cabin, despoiled me altogether, being obliged to remain with
my clothes dripping, for the wave having fallen upon my
mattress at the same time as upon my bed, the whole was as
much steeped in sea water as the wearing apparel that was
on my person. A marine officer gave me his cabin, but I
was destined not to be in any respect at my ease, during this
tempest. Every wave which covered the deck made the
water fall continually upon my legs, through a rent which
rushed incessantly like the cascade of a river.
We arrived at Louisbourg on the 14th of September, after
a very long and annoying passage, owing to the bad weather
and contrary winds, which prevailed almost without interrup-
tion, which but for that would have been more supportable,
by the provisions of all kinds which were provided to us by
the shipowner, M. Pascaut, not at all resembling the shabby
things of Eoderick, who without doubt imagining that the
" Iphigenie" ought naturally to sink to the bottom all at once,
believed it unnecessary to be at the expense of procuring us
any delicacies for the vovage.
The bad climate of Louisbourg, where one does not see
the sun sometimes for a month ; the extreme misery Avhich
you experience from that; not having it in your power to pro-
cure a morsel of fresh meat at any price whatever ; the
society of the ladies of the place very amiable, but having
always cards in their hands, my avocations would not per-
mit of me daily to make one of their parties, all contributed
179
to cause me acquire a taste for reading and studying philo-
sophy, very seldom going out of my room except to attend to
my duty, of which I acquitted myself with the most scrupu-
lous exactitude, or to go once or twice a week to fish for trout
with my servant, St. Julien, who was an excellent Jack-of-
all-trades, expert for furnishing my table, bringing generally
eight or ten dozen of trouts, in two hours fishing with the line,
the streams in the neighbourhood being very full of fish.
Puysegur, Polybius, with the Commentaries of Folard, Feu-
guiere, Vegetius, the Commentaries of Caesar, Turenne, Mon-
tecuculi, Prince Eugene, Josephus, the Roman History, and
Vauban, and other books of the same description, served me
for killing the time, to dispel the evils of my position, not
having obtained my promotion, but only the place of inter-
preter to the King, who granted me four hundred livres of
augmentation annually, and to dissipate the dismal ideas
which would have otherwise plunged me in despair. I had a
small garden in front of the windows of my chamber, which
St. Julien had cleared to serve me for relaxation, when I was
fatigued, and my eyes weakened by reading. I there enjoyed
a true and perfect satisfaction from the esteem and friendship
of all my comrades, which was not an easy matter to secure,
for the corps of the Royal Isle, composed of more than a
hundred officers, was divided into three factions, the ancients
of the country ; those who had come from Canada, and the
reformed officers of France, who had their settlement at
Louisbourg, and all these three mutually detested each other,
and were continually quarrelling; but having entered the
corps by declaring that I would not enter into their cabals,
which did not mix me up, in any degree, in their disputes and
animosities, so that I chose my friends on the whole where I
found them to my taste, only taking my part to defend my-
self against those who wished to insult me, or who sought to
embroil me in a quarrel ; thus by the strict neutrality, which
I always observed, I had always the good-will of every one,
180
and I heard the horrors which these officers, eternally in
discord, came to tell me daily, the one against the other,
without ever having a bias for one side or another, hearing
them without answering them.
M. the Count of Raimond, who shewed me daily marks
of his esteem and favour, having asked my promotion, they
sent me a lieutenancy in 1754, by which, with the situation
of interpreter to the King, I had more pay than the cap-
tains, but I was not nattered by it. Seeing how much I
had reason not further to allow myself to be deceived by
promises, I took the resolution of repassing into France this
year, and of obtaining a company or seeking service else-
where ; and I regarded this voyage as much more indis-
pensable, because I was at variance with the commissary of
ordnance since the first year of my arrival at Louisbourg,
who, by his assistants in business, was too powerful in the
cabinet of the marine, and always unremitting against the
governors, M. Herbiers and Raimond, who incessantly com-
plained of him to the Court, but in vain, respecting his rob-
beries of magazines and other knaveries. He was a finished
rascal, vain and proud as a peacock, of the most obscure birth,
who had a pretty amiable wife, of whom he was jealous to the
last degree. He took every opportunity to thwart me and
give me pain, without effect, at Louisbourg, for by acquitting
myself of my duties, with all the correctness possible, I
always preserved the esteem and friendship of niy superiors.
Fortune was not wanting to complete my misery, but to join
her hatred and her hostility to my other sufferings, by the
wretched climate and the bad fare. Thus being overcome, I
had the melancholy satisfaction that she could not become
worse.* At length the capture of Louisbourg in 1758, de-
* M. James Prevost came to make himself be abhorred by all the
officers, not only of the corps of the Eoyal Isle, but also of the regiments of
Artois and Bourgogne, no officers of which, from the commanders to the
ensign ever went to his house. When the English fleet appeared before
181
livered me from a purgatory where I had suffered evils of
every description, and not choosing to expose myself to be a
prisoner of the same regiments of Lee, Warburton, and
Lascelles, who had been our prisoners in Scotland at the
Battle of Gladsmuir (Prestonpans), in 1745, after the capitu-
lation of that town, I saved myself in Acadia, and from that
in Canada. Hostilities having commenced in Acadia in 1754,
when I was upon the point of departing for Europe, as they
proclaimed an approaching war, it was not proper for me to
absent myself in that critical time, and I did not think more
than of continuing there, hoping by my zeal and my services to
obtain my promotion, which I had never been able to effect
from the supineness and weak efforts of my patrons, who were
sufficiently powerful to have secured for me a more favour-
able situation, if they had chosen to agitate in my favour, as
I had reason to hope from their promises, of which I was the
dupe, through my credulity. Having had a wherry and fifty
Canadians at Miremachie, in Acadia, to conduct forty English
prisoners to Quebec, who were among the officers of infantry,
and captains of merchant ships, I departed immediately with-
Louisbourg, in 1757, all the troops marched out upon the instant to man
the intrenchments of Ances in the Bay of Gabarus, in order to oppose their
landing, and M. Guerin, our surgeon-general, having given M. St. Julien
a recipe for a sling, some spirits, and other things necessary for dressing
wounds, Prevost replied to M. St. Julien, commandant by seniority of all
our troops, "that there was nothing at all in the king's magazines, that if
the English forced our intrenchments, it fell to them to take care of our
wounded, and if we repulsed them they would have time to look after
them." M. St. Julien reported immediately this affair with his complaints
to M. Bois de la Mothe, who at the instant landed at nine o'clock at night,
proceeded directly to Prevost's house, and having threatened to set it on
fire, and to send him back to France, if everything which the store contained
was not ready by the next day, in the morning, all was furnished, to the
great disappointment of this inhuman monster, who wished from his hatred
to all the officers, to make these brave people perish for want of assistance,
and he wept through rage. He found the means of making himself equally
despised and detested by all the officers of the ship, and M. the Prince of
Listenois always treated him as the last of miscreants.
182
out resting more than two days. In entering the Gulf of
St. Lawrence, we perceived an English squadron, which gave
us chase, aud we escaped from being taken by their frigates by
saving ourselves in the small harbours, of which there are a
great many along this coast. This was a fortunate discovery,
for I found M. Echaifaud at the entry of the river, with five
ships of the line, which were ordered to be ready to set sail
for Europe, who, ignorant that there was an English fleet in
the Gulf, would have fallen into their hands ; and to avoid
them he passed by the straits of Belle Isle.
I was welcomed very favourably in Canada, above all by
M. Levis and M. Montcalm, who immediately accorded to me
their esteem, confidence, and good graces, in a distinguished
manner, and M. Bigot, the commissary, the contrast of
Prevost, who made it a pleasure to facilitate and solace the
sufferings of unfortunate military men, gave me from the
stores a complete outfit, for I was quite naked, having left my
rags at Louisbourg, without having taken any other thing
with me, but two shirts in my pocket. M. Levis took me for
his aide-de-camp, at the commencement of the campaign of
^ 1759 ; and not having a sufficiency of engineers for the im-
mense extent of ground which our camp at Quebec occupied,
a front upon the banks of the river of about two leagues, to
fortify, from the River of St. Charles as far as the Fall Mont-
morency, I undertook to trace and conduct the intrenchments,
redoubt, and battery on the left of our camp, where M. Levis
commanded, on condition that I should execute them agree-
ably to my own ideas, and that the engineers should not in-
terfere with them ; so my own personal vanity was much
nattered when the English made their descent, and attacked
on the 31st of July, the works which I had constructed,
and were repulsed with the loss of five hundred men. I
was ordered at the same time to examine the prisoners, and
to translate into French their depositions. My occupations
were so multifarious that I never had an hour's sleep in the
183
twenty four ; and it being impossible for M. Levis to furnish
me with either coverlet, bed-clothes, or mattress, having left
mine at Carillon, I always slept, quite dressed upon chairs or
upon boards, in M. Levis's bedchamber, without ever daring
to take off my clothes, during the campaign of 1759, but to
change my linen, and very rarely my boots, except to change
my stockings. It was my usual in the mornings at the break of
day to be exposed to cannon shots and musketry, in visiting
with M. Levis our advanced posts. These journeys occurred
always the same, to carry the orders of M. Levis, or with
four hundred pioneers, and the nights equally employed, to
answer orders which were arriving continually, by allowing
M. Levis to sleep at least, unless there was anything of im-
portance, or to write depositions, or orders. Every one told
me that it would be necessary to have a body of iron to be
able to resist it ; but there were three things that sustained
and encouraged me in my overwhelming fatigue : my ambi-
tion to render myself useful in the service of the king,
and to rise in it; my friendship and attachment for M.
Levis personally ; and the uncertainty of my fate, if I was
taken by the English, many regiments of which had been
our prisoners in Scotland, in 1745, made me look upon the pre-
servation of this colony the same as my own proper welfare.
Pecuniary interest had no part in it ; for not only did I con-
stantly refuse the contract of fascines and gabions, which had
yielded to another officer twenty or thirty thousand livres, but
I preferred always that the sergeants who served me as pickers
should receive from the commissary the payments according to
my statements, with orders immediately to distribute by them-
selves the money to the pioneers. Having husbanded for the
king the half hours, and even to the days of those who were
absent on leave, by the roll-calls, which I made four times
a-day, this would have amounted to a considerable sum which
one would have had it in his power to appropriate to himself,
according to the then custom of the place, if I had had less
184
of probity, straightforwardness, and sentiments ; for four hun-
dred pioneers which I had at twenty sols per day, would not
have fallen short sometimes of a fourth by the roll-call.
M. Levis was sent at the beginning of August to command
to Montreal, upon a false rumour that a corps of English
troops were endeavouring to penetrate into the higher districts
of the country ; and my portmanteau was already despatched
the night before with the baggage, when M. Montcalm came
to his house, at the moment we were going to depart, to beg
that he would leave me with him, on account of the knowledge
that I had of all our posts to the Fall of Montmorency,' and
the plans of defence for that quarter. He consented to it ;
and as I loved M. Levis with a sincere attachment, I quitted
him with very great regret, and tears in my eyes, desiring
ardently to continue in company with him. I accompanied
him until we came up with the baggage, in order to bring
back again my portmanteau, and I remained with him to sleep
all night, and the next day I returned to M. Montcalm's to
continue with him my functions of aide-de-camp. This
great man, worthy of a better fate, said to me that he knew
well the sacrifice I had made in quitting M. Levis, but that I
should have no reason to repent it. So he constantly testified
to me the same affection and friendship, as if I had been his
son. But I repented greatly this change by his premature
death, for but for that I would not have known so particularly
his rare merit, and had to deplore his loss all my life.
The consequences of the death of M. Montcalm, who was
killed at the battle of Quebec, the 13th of September, or my
usual destiny precipitated me uselessly into a horrible per-
plexity, from which I escaped in the end, nearly suffering the
same lot. Having finished the campaign of 1759 quicker
than we had reason to expect, I decided on returning to
France with M. Cannon in the fall of the season. This
voyage was essentially necessary for me, the -more so that I
found myself the oldest lieutenant of the force in Canada,
185
which, alternated with that of the Royal Isle by my com-
mission of 1754, and as there were three vacant com-
panies of troops in that colony, I thought I had a right
naturally to expect by my services to obtain one of these
companies. But M. the Marquis of Vaudreuil refused me
obstinately my leave, in spite of the requests of M. Levis to
dbtain it, being afraid apparently that I would give the Court
a true detail of this campaign, which decided without remedy,
the loss of Canada to France. In the meantime, he gave me
his word of honour that he would render me justice, and that
I should have a company ; but insisting always on my getting
my leave to go to France, he answered me that if I persisted
in seeking my leave I should get nothing. In short, in
1760, the list of promotions having arrived, I found these
companies disposed of, in favour of three officers much junior
to me by many years, and no ways distinguished by their
services, one of the three being the son of a hairdresser to the
king, and, in consequence, the protege of the commissary.
What a service is that of the French for a stranger ! I was
not at ease at Montreal, while they were settling the general
capitulation of the Colony, in the uncertainty of the treatment
that I might receive from the English, and having nothing to
depend upon from the Marquis of Vaudreuil, it was time that
I should bethink me of getting myself out of this bad affair
as I best could, my situation having become as embarrassed
and perilous as it was after the battle of Culloden. M.
Young, colonel of an American regiment, found himself at
Montreal, having been made prisoner in the battle which M.
Levis had gained in the spring near Quebec. He was
cousin-german to my brother-in-law, M. Hollo ; besides, a
person very considerable in the English army by his merits,
talents, spirit, and character the most amiable ; and all my '
hopes of being able to escape the evil fate that threatened
me were founded upon him. I went to stay at his house,
while the French and English generals were negotiating
186
the terms of the capitulation, and there came M. Mills,
aide-de-camp to General Amherst, with two other English
officers, to sup also at the house of Colonel Young, in waiting
there for the answer of M. Vaudreuil to the propositions of
General Amherst. I was very much disconcerted at supper ;
for M. Levis having given me the name of the Chevalier de
Montague, while M. Young always called me that of Mon-
tague, the Ladies Erie, daughters of the merchant in whose
house we lodged, called me always by my right name ; and
this was so often repeated, that I perceived the English officers
had remarked it, and I made a sign to M. Young that I
wished to speak to him in private. Having retired into a closet
off the room, I said to him that it appeared necessary to con-
fide quite plainly my secret to M. Mills ; and M. Young
having approved my advice, called him immediately to join
us. I told him plainly my situation, that I had been with
Prince Edward in Scotland ; and I begged of him to tell me
if he thought I ought to wait upon M. Amherst. At the
same time M. Young informed M. Mills of our relationship,
and of the part which he had taken warmly in my interests,
recommending me strongly to his good offices with the General,
and to sound his disposition in regard to me, in order that he
might give us information of these next day in the morning.
This aide-de-camp answered us that General Amherst, being
of a character so peculiar that nobody was ever able to pene-
trate his intentions, he would much better not speak to him
of it, the more especially as he would only remain a few days
at Montreal, and that M. Murray, who would command on
his departure, would be much more tractable. He added that
if the General should take a violent part against me, he would
know it immediately, and he gave us his word of honour to
inform us of it, in good time, to enable me to save myself in
the woods.
I was in a terrible alarm for some days after the English
were in possession of the town. Some one came and knocked
187
rudely at the door of my room towards seven o'clock in the
morning, and having opened it, I remained stupified on seeing
a great young man in English uniform, about six feet high,
who demanded of me if that was I, calling me by my own
name, to whom he had the honour of speaking. Although I
believed that he was come with a detachment to apprehend
me, seeing the impossibility of being able to escape, I
answered him, "Yes," and asked him at the same time what
he wanted. He told me that he was my near relation, of the
same name as myself, son of Lady Girthead, whom I saw in
passing when I entered England with the army of Prince
Edward, that he was a captain of artillery, and that before
rejoining his cannoneers at Quebec, the first day by water, he
had come to offer me his services, begging me to embark with
him in his vessels of artillery, where I would not be recog-
nized, to remain with him in the house, which he had fur-
nished at Beaufort, near Quebec, where he lived with a
mistress, until our troops should embark in the transport ships.
I answered him that I was very sensible of his obliging offer,
but that I would not for all the things in the world engage
him lightly in so mischievous an adventure, and I advised him
immediately to go to the house of General Murray, Amherst
having departed, to tell him ingenuously that he had found at
Montreal a near relation, who had been in the rebellion of Scot-
land, presently in the service of France ; that he had a great
desire to testify his civilities to him by taking him with him
to his house at Beaufort, but that he would not do anything
without his permission ; asking him at the same time how he
ought to conduct himself in that respect. He went off on the
instant, and returned at the end of two hours to tell me that
General Murray had answered him " that he knew for a long
time as well as the whole English army, that I was in Canada ;
that I might remain quietly at his house without having any-
thing to fear on his part ; that if I did not seek him he would
not seek me any farther ; and that he offered me cordially his
188
compliments." My particular capitulation being thus very
favourably concluded, I immediately left Montreal to repair to
Beaufort, and I passed there three weeks, waiting the embark-
ment of our troops, with all the agreeableness possible ; always
in feasting, and in companies of English officers, every one with
his mistress, giving alternately great banquets at the house of
_jnv relative, as well as in theirs, where I was always of the
parties ; these officers showing me every sort of attentions and
civilities, with a care continually of calling me M. Montague,
although they knew very well my history, none of them being
surprised that I spoke their language so well. I had great
reason to praise their conduct in regard to me.
An Englishman asked me one day the name of the general
officer, mounted upon the black horse, who had passed their
army at the moment after the defeat of our army, the 13th of
September the year preceding. He added that they aimed at
his horse in order to dismount him, and make him prisoner ;
but that it turned out that his horse was invulnerable, to
escape the thousand musket shots which assailed him on all
sides. I answered him that it was myself ; that chance had
conducted me there without any desire or ambition to attain
that salutation, worthy in effect of a general officer, but that
their soldiers had not followed their orders, for the dis-
charge they had aimed at me fell in the brushwood, I felt the
sound of the balls which passed me at the height of the
horizon, like a handful of pease which they had thrown in my
face ; and I showed him my dress, in which a ball had carried
a piece of cloth from the shoulder. As the English had a much
higher opinion of the French regiments than of the troops
of the colony, I embarked in a transport vessel destined for
the Regiment of royal Roussillon, with my friend M.
Poularies, who placed me on the muster roll as an officer of
that regiment ; and we departed from Quebec the 1 6th of
October, with all the transport vessels which the English had
furnished us with, in terms of the capitulation to convey us
189
to France. Before leaving the river St. Lawrence, we easily
perceived that our ship was old, rotten, and resembling alto-
gether the "Iphigenie " ; still we had the hope to keep ourselves
afloat, and of having succour in case of need ; but at the end
of three days after having left the Gulf, we found our-
selves alone, without company, and left to Providence, not
being able to proceed so fast as the other vessels ! They left
us altogether behind them. The days of All Saints and
St. Martin's we had two furious gales of wind at the top of
the Azores. Our vessel made a flood of water which would
have caused us sink to the bottom, if a canvas, which they
attached to the end of a rope, had not been plunged into the
sea, with a great lump of grease at the handle to block it up,
to wait until good weather should allow the carpenter to work
at it ; and the ship being open, as the " Iphigenie" had been,
they bound it about with a cable. After these gales of wind
we found again a ship of our fleet, in which were M. Mouy, M.
Druillon, and some other officers of Canada ; and having told
them the miserable condition of our vessel, and the danger we
were in, expecting at every instant to sink to the bottom,
we prayed them earnestly not to part from us. We re-
mained together for three days, until another gale of wind
separated us. At last we arrived in the roadstead of the
island of Re, the 3rd of December, in the evening, where we
anchored at once ; and a pilot came on board to conduct
us the next day to Rochelle, which is five leagues from that.
As it turned out fine weather, the English captain, from
the vanity of not letting the bad condition of his ship be known
to his acquaintances, loosed immediately the cable and other
things which he had made use of to secure the ship. At mid-
night the wind began to rise, and became in a very short time
a most frightful hurricane. We let down in a moment two
anchors of the three which we had, and the pilot of the Island
of Re, who had a melancholy countenance, at finding himself
involved so opportunely in our disastrous adventure, told us
190
that the cable of the third anchor would soon be broken as the
others, adding that there was no other way of avoiding perish-
ing all souls and goods upon the rocks, with which the island
was on all sides surrounded, than to endeavour to make a
voluntary shipwreck in the river of Moraine, the bottom of
which is muddy ; and he told us that for little if the ship would
carry sufficient sail to be able to govern her, he hoped to save
the life of all by conducting her thither. His salutary advice
was immediately followed forthwith by the English captain.
We cast out immediately our last cable, but the first sail
which they set was in an instant shattered in pieces like sheets
of paper ; in the meantime having tried the mainsail, which
stood better than the other, he dashed us to the side of the
entrance which he proposed to take, and our ship entered the
basin like as in a pot of butter, without feeling the least shock ;
they then set the sails to fix as far as it was possible the ship in
the basin, fearing that the wind coming, might throw us to the
other side upon the rocks, and we were immediately anchored,
having nothing more to fear. The next day in the morning,
in a calm sea, I reached the land by means of a ladder and
planks, which they had placed on the Quay, the oth December,
1760, and after having kissed the ground with good heart, I
entered into a naval hotel, where I found an abundance of
excellent oysters and white wine, fully determined not to put
myself again in the power of Neptune.
Fortune has not been more favourable to me since my
return to France, having always continued her persecutions
without ceasing with an invincible obstinacy ; and there is no
appearance at present that she will cease to overwhelm me
but by finishing my existence, perhaps from the want of the
necessaries of life, my lot not being likely to be ameliorated
at my age. I can well verify what Artabanes said to Xerxes,
when he shed tears, on reviewing his innumerable army,
at the passage of the Hellespont, by the reflection that in
a hundred years there would not be one of that great mul-
191
titude alive. "But are we not exposed during life to things
more melancholy and pitiable than these? for during the
short time that he is in the world, there has not been a man
so happy as not to have wished many times to die rather than
to live.* In fact, diseases and misfortunes disturb the most de-
lightful days of life, and are the cause that, moreover, although
so short, it is thought long and wearisome. Thus death is to
men the wished for refuge of an unhappy life ; and one may
say that God, who is immortal, treats us with rigour in giving
us life on conditions so annoying. j*" Herodotus.
* The joys of life, in the experience of most, if not of all men, I should
say, preponderate. ED.
+ Without approving of the last remark of the heathen Historian, we
may observe that the philosophical and thoughtful reflections of the
Chevalier throughout this work, and particularly in the notes, hitherto un-
published, add a value to it, which will be duly appreciated by every culti-
vated mind, and which has certainly not a little relieved the tedium of the
labour in the hands of the Translator. ED.
G. CORNWALL AND SONS, PRINTERS AND LITHOGRAPHERS, ABERDEEN.
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