Page:Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope.djvu/179

 walking the quays and inquiring for a vessel bound across the Atlantic, he was told there was none; there was, however, a large merchant-ship freighting for the East Indies. Learning that the country she was chartered for was still more distant than the western colonies, he concluded, in his ardent and youthful mind, that it would open to him a still greater chance of meeting with adventures and of enriching himself. He accordingly got himself rated to work his passage as a seaman, and arrived in safety at the ship's destination.

It would be useless to occupy the reader's time with the struggles which every man, unknown and without recommendations, has to make on a foreign shore, before he gets a footing in some shape congenial to his talents or his inclination. Natural talents Loustaunau had; for, in the space of a few months after his arrival on the Indian coast, he was spoken of as an intelligent young man to the French ambassador, Monsieur de Marigny, residing at Poonah, the Mahratta court, as far as I could understand: since it is to be borne in mind that Mr. Loustaunau, when he related all this, was eighty years old, had almost lost his memory, and was relapsing into second childhood. He soon after became an inmate of the embassy, on terms of some familiarity with Monsieur de Marigny, who discovered, in the young adventurer's conversation, so