Page:A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2.djvu/487

Wilhems Plains.]



Yesterday at noon I had the honour of receiving your letter of the 1st. inst. It is true that I have sometimes profited by the permission contained in the parole which I had given (que j'avais donnée) on Aug. 23, 1805, by which I was allowed to go as far as two leagues from the plantation of Madame D'Arifat; but since His Excellency the captain-general has thought good to make other regulations, I shall endeavour to conduct myself with so much prudence respecting the orders now given, that His Excellency will not have any just cause of complaint against me.

I have the honour to be, &c.

The two objects I had in view in giving this answer, were, to promise nothing in regard to my movements, and to avoid close imprisonment if it could be done without dishonour; had it been demanded whether I still considered the parole to be in force, my answer was perfectly ready and very short, but no such question was asked. Many circumstances had given room to suspect, that the captain-general secretly desired I should attempt an escape; and his view in it might either have been to some extraordinary severity, or in case his spies failed of giving timely information, to charging me with having broken parole and thus to throw a veil over his own injustice. Hence it might have been that he did not seek to know whether, being restricted to the plantation of Madame D'Arifat, I still admitted the obligatory part of the parole to be binding; and that the expression in my answer,—the parole which I had given, implying that it existed no longer, passed without question. However this might be, I thenceforward declined accepting any invitations beyond the immediate neighbourhood of the plantation; and until the decisive moment should arrive, amused by solitude with instructing the two younger sons of our good family in the elements of mathematical science, with inventing problems and calculating tables that might be useful to navigation, and in reading the most esteemed French authors.