Page:An account of a savage girl.djvu/69

Rh she was caught; and likeways, for the circumstances which they at first discovered by her signs, and afterwards by her conversation, of her having been about a Lady whom she had seen working at a sort of tapestry. This last supposition too requires but a very short space of time, twelve or fifteen days perhaps, between her escape from her master in Lorrain, and her appearing near Chalons. Whence we may more easily conceive how her black colour still continued, altho' she had swam across one river at least. This appears to me to be only attended with one difficulty, namely, that altho' these two children were found so near the place from whence they had escaped, and their story became public, yet their masters never discovered themselves. This objection, however, is by nσ means unanswerable. Perhaps their master or mistress being tired of them, and having despaired of being able to tame them, were not at all displeased to get rid of them, and therefore gave themselves no trouble about recovering them, or, at least, did not insist on their being restored. This is, in some measure, confirmed by what M. de L told me of some enquiry having been made from Holland, as he thinks, in consequence of which the young savage was claimed from the late M d'Epinoy, who refused to return her: But it should seem that the requisition has been but faintly insisted on.