Page:Memoirs of a Huguenot Family.djvu/39

 Rh. The dragoons were thereupon ordered from his house, and fifteen days allowed to him for consideration.

Observe, my dear children, the fatal influence of a bad wife over a too yielding husband. The first step was persuading him to withhold, from his affectionate, widowed mother, that respectful tenderness to which she was entitled. The next was to induce him to temporize for the sake of gold, and finally, he was forsaken of God. He, who had been as a shining lamp in the tabernacle, preaching to others, renounced the pure faith he had taught, and signed the act of abjuration. It is always thus; the great enemy of mankind tempts us first to commit small sins, and the downward path becomes easier as we descend. Let us lay to heart the lesson taught in the fall of some members of our family, and learn from it distrust of self and dependence upon God, for the grace of his Holy Spirit, to sustain us through temptation and deliver us from evil. It is a comfort to me to know that my brother had no son; thus there is not one descendant of my father, bearing the honored name of Fontaine, who is now living in France in what I consider idolatry.

3. Mary, married Peter Forestier, a zealous minister, an able preacher and a sound theologian, of whom I shall have occasion to make honorable mention hereafter.

4. Ann, my youngest sister, the light and joy of the house, married Leon Testard Sieur des Meslars. He changed his religion, or pretended to do so, when the dragoons came, but my sister remained firm in her faith, and could not give up the hope of escaping from France, and in about two years after the abjuration it was accomplished. They landed in safety at Plymouth, but my sister's health was much impaired, and she died a few months after reaching England, well