Page:Clermont - Roche (1798, volume 3).djvu/201

 acknowledged me as his brother, he considered me as the illegitimate son of his father.

"From the hour our friendship commenced I determined never more to mention the painful subject of my mother's wrongs and mine. But ere I would accept his offers of assistance, I made him assure me that his own feelings alone prompted him to serve me, solemnly vowing within my mind never through any hands, or by any means, to receive any mark of kindness from my father, except acknowledged by him in the light I wished.

"St. Julian (for so I now called him, though my heart swelled as I did so), informed me that in a few days he was going to Italy, and asked me to accompany him thither. This I gladly consented to do, and, in the interim he said he would bring me to the house of a cottager, where I might be secretly lodged: 'And ere we return to France, (continued he) we may think of some plan for your future establishment in life.'