Page:Honest debtor, or, The virtuous man struggling with, rising superior to, and overcoming misfortune (1).pdf/10

( 10 ) ed to be the happieſt I had ever experienced, proved to be the moſt fatal. It deprived mne both of the mother and the child. This ſtroke plunged me into an abyſs of ſorrow. I will not tell you how heart-breaking it None but thoſe who experience ſuch ſorrows can imagine what they are.

'I was ſtill in the heiglit of my affliction, when my wife's father ſent his notary with the information, accompanied with a few words of flight condolence, that the writings were drawn up to transfer back into his hands the fortune* I had received from him, Indignant at this indecent precipitation, ! anſwered, that I was quite prepared ; and the next day the fortune was returned. But the jewels that I had given his daughter, and the other articles of value for her own particular uſe, became alſo his property. He had a legal right to them. I repreſented the inhumanity of requiring me, after eighteen months marriage, to ſubmit to ſo ſevere a law; but he infifted upon his right with all the impatience of a greedy claimant. I ſubmitted; and this ſevere exaction made ſome noiſe in the world. Then did the envy my happineſs had excited, haſten to puniſh me for my ſhort-lived felicity, and, under the diſguiſe of pity, tonk great care to divulge my ruin, which it ſeemed to de-

By the laws of France on the death of the Mother and iſſue, her fortune reverts back to her family.