The more, sir, is my obligation to you that saved my life; and added, I am glad to see you here, that I may consider how to balance an account in which I am so much your debtor. You and I will adjust that matter easily, says he, now we are so near together; pray where do you lodge? says he.

In a very honest, good house, said I, where that gentleman, your friend, recommended me; pointing to the merchant in whose house we then were.

And where you may lodge too sir, says the gentleman, if it suits with your business, and your other conveniency.

With all my heart, says he; then, madam, adds he, turning to me, I shall be near you, and have time to tell you a story which will be very long, and yet many ways very pleasant to you; how troublesome that devilish fellow, the Jew, has been to me on your account, and what a hellish snare he had laid for you, if he could have found you.

I shall have leisure too, sir, said I, to tell you all my adventures since that; which have not been a few, I assure you.

In short, he took up his lodgings in the same house where I lodged, and the room he lay in opened, as he was wishing it would, just opposite to my lodging-room, so we could almost call out of bed to one another; and I was not at all shy of him on that score, for I believed him perfectly honest, and so indeed he was; and if he had not, that article was at present no part of my concern.

It was not till two or three days, and after his first hurries of business were over, that we began to enter into the history of our affairs on every side, but when we began, it took up all our conversation for almost a fortnight. First, I gave him a particular account of everything that happened material npon my voyage, and how we were driven into Harwich by a very terrible storm; how I had left my woman behind me, so frighted with the danger she had been in, that she durst not venture to set her foot into a ship again any more, and that I had not come myself, if the bills I had of him had not been payable in Holland; but that money, he might see, would make a woman go anywhere.

He seemed to laugh at all our womanish fears upon the occasion of the storm, telling me it was nothing but what was very ordinary in those seas, but that they had harbours on

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every coast so near that they were seldom in danger of being lost indeed; For, says he, if they cannot fetch one coast, they can always stand away for another, and run afore it, as he called it, for one side or other. But when I came to tell him what a crazy ship it was, and how, even when they got into Harwich, and into smooth water, they were fain to run the ship on shore, or she would have sunk in the very harbour and when I told him, that when I looked out at the cabin door, I saw the Dutchmen, one upon his knees here, and another there, at their prayers, then indeed, he acknowledged I had reason to be alarmed; but smiling, he added, But you, madam, says he, are so good a lady, and so pious, you would but have gone to heaven a little the sooner: the difference had not been much to you.

I confess, when he said this, it made all the blood turn in my veins, and I thought I should have fainted. Poor gentleman, thought I, you know little of me; what would I give to be really what you really think me to be! He perceived the disorder, but said nothing till I spoke; when, shaking my head, O sir, said I, death in any shape has some terror in it, but in the frightful figure of a storm at sea, and a sinking ship, it comes with a double, a treble, and indeed, an inexpressible horror; and if I were that saint you think me to be (which God knows I am not), it is still very dismal; I desire to die in a calm, if I can. He said a great many good things, and very prettily ordered his discourse between serious reflection and compliment, but I had too much guilt to relish it as it was meant, so I turned it off to something else, and talked of the necessity I had on me to come to Holland, but I wished myself safe on shore in England again.

He told me, he was glad I had such an obligation upon me to come over into Holland, however; but hinted that he was so interested in my welfare, and besides had such farther designs upon me, that if I had not so happily been found in Holland, he was resolved to have gone to England to see me ; and that it was one of the principal reasons of his leaving Paris.

I told him I was extremely obliged to him for so far interesting himself in my affairs, but that I had been so far his debtor before, that I knew not how anything could increase the debt; for I owed my life to him already, and I could not be in debt for anything more valuable than that. He answered

in the most obliging manner possible, that he would put it in my power to pay that debt, and all the obligations besides that ever he had, or should be able to lay upon me.

I began to understand him now, and to see plainly that he resolved to make love to me; but I would by no means seem to take the hint, and besides I knew that he had a wife with him in Paris; and I had, just then, at least, no gust to any more intriguing; however, he surprised me into a sudden notice of the thing a little while after, by saying something in his discourse that he did, as he said, in his wife's days. I started at that word, What mean you by that, sir? said I; have you not a wife at Paris? No, madam, indeed, said he, my wife died the beginning of September last; which it seems was but a little after I came away.

We lived in the same house all this while; and as we lodged not far off of one another, opportunities were not wanting of as near an acquaintance as we might desire; nor have such opportunities the least agency in vicious minds to bring to pass even what they might not intend at first.

However, though he courted so much at a distance, yet his pretensions were very honourable; and as I had before found him a most disinterested friend, and perfectly honest in his dealings, even when I trusted him with all I had, so now I found him strictly virtuous, till I made him otherwise myself, even almost whether he would or no, as you shall hear.

It was not long after our former discourse, when he repeated what he had insinuated before, namely, that he had yet a design to lay before me, which, if I would agree to his proposals, would more than balance all accounts between us. I told him I could not reasonably deny him anything; and except one thing, which I hoped and believed he would not think of, I should think myself very ungrateful if I did not do everything for him that lay in my power.

He told me, what he should desire of me would be fully in my power to grant, or else he should be very unfriendly to offer it; and still all this while he declined making the proposal, as he called it, and so for that time we ended our discourse, turning it off to other things; so that, in short, I began to think he might have met with some disaster in his business, and might have come away from Paris in some discredit, or had had some blow on his affairs in general; and

as really I had kindness enough to have parted with a good sum to have helped him, and was in gratitude bound to have done so, he having so effectually saved to me all I had; so I resolved to make him the offer the first time I had an opportunity, which two or three days after offered itself, very much to my satisfaction.

He had told me at large, though on several occasions, the treatment he had met with from the Jew, and what expense he had put him to; how at length he had cast him, as above, and had recovered good damage of him, but that the rogue was unable to make him any considerable reparation. He had told me also how the Prince d'- -'s gentleman had resented his treatment of his master; and how he had caused him to be used upon the Pont Neuf, &c., as I have mentioned above, which I laughed at most heartily.

It is a pity, said I, that I should sit here and make that gentleman no amends; if you would direct me, sir, said I, how to do it, I would make him a handsome present, and acknowledge the justice he had done to me, as well as to the prince, his master. He said he would do what I directed in it; so I told him I would send him five hundred crowns. That's too much, said he, for you are but half interested in the usage of the Jew; it was on his master's account he corrected him, not on yours. Well, however, we were obliged to do nothing in it, for neither of us knew how to direct a letter to him, or to direct anybody to him; so I told him I would leave it till I came to England, for that my woman, Amy, corresponded with him, and that he had made love to her.

Well, but sir, said I, as in requital for his generous concern for me, I am careful to think of him, it is but just that what expense you have been obliged to be at, which was all on my account, should be repaid you; and therefore, said I, Let me see; and there I paused, and began to reckon up what I had observed from his own discourse it had cost him in the several disputes and hearings which he had with that dog of a Jew, and I cast them up at something above 2,130 crowns; so I pulled out some bills which I had upon a merchant in Amsterdam, and a particular account in bank, and was looking on them in order to give them to him.

When he seeing evidently what I was going about, interrupted me with some warmth, and told me he would have

nothing of me on that account, and desired I would not pull out my bills and papers on that score; that he had not told me the story on that account, or with any such view; that it had been his misfortune first to bring that ugly rogue to me, which, though it was with a good design, yet he would punish himself with the expense he had been at, for his being so unlucky to me; that I could not think so hard of him as to suppose he would take money of me, a widow, for serving me, and doing acts of kindness to me in a strange country, and in distress too; but he said he would repeat what he had said before, that he kept me for a deeper reckoning, and that, as he had told me, he would put me into a posture to even all that favour, as I called it, at once, so we should talk it over another time, and balance all together.

Now I expected it would come out, but still he put it off, as before, from whence I concluded it could not be matter of love, for that those things are not usually delayed in such a manner, and therefore it must be matter of money; upon which thought I broke the silence, and told him, that as he knew I had, by obligation, more kindness for him than to deny any favour to him that I could grant, and that he seemed backward to mention his case, I begged leave of him to give me leave to ask him whether anything lay upon his mind with respect to his business and effects in the world; that if it did, he knew what I had in the world as well as I did; and that if he wanted money, I would let him have any sum for his occasion, as far as five or six thousand pistoles, and he should pay me as his own affairs would permit; and that, if he never paid me, I would assure him that I would never give him any trouble for it.

He rose up with ceremony, and gave me thanks in terms that sufficiently told me he had been bred among people more polite and more courteous than is esteemed the ordinary usage of the Dutch; and after his compliment was over, he came nearer to me, and told me that he was obliged to assure me, though with repeated acknowledgments of my kind offer, that he was not in any want of money; that he had met with no uneasiness in any of his affairs, no, not of any kind whatever, except that of the loss of his wife and one of his children, which indeed had troubled him much; but that this was no part of what he had to offer me, and by granting which I should balance all obligations; but that, in short, it