Page:Moll Flanders (1906 edition).djvu/362

330 a little push at it again, and I laughed again. 'Why, what dost thou talk of?' said I in a formal way. 'Dost thou not see I am turned Quaker? I cannot speak of those things now.' 'Why', says he, 'the Quakers marry as well as other people, and love one another as well. Besides', says he, 'the Quakers' dress does not ill become you', and so jested with me again, and so it went off for a third time. However, I began to be kind to him in process of time, as they call it, and we grew very intimate; and, if the following accident had not unluckily intervened, I had certainly married him, or consented to marry him, the very next time he had asked me.

I had long waited for a letter from Amy, who, it seems, was just at that time gone to Rouen the second time, to make her inquires about him; and I received a letter from her at this unhappy juncture, which gave me the following account of my business:

I. That for my gentleman, who I had now, as I may say, in my arms, she said he had been gone from Paris, as I have hinted, having met with some great losses and misfortunes; that he had been in Holland on that very account, whither he had also carried his children; that he was after that settled for some time at Rouen; that she had been at Rouen, and found there (by a mere accident), from a Dutch skipper, that he was at London, had been there above three years; that he was to be found upon the Exchange, on the French walk; and that he lodged at St. Laurence Pountney's Lane, and the like; so Amy said she supposed I might soon find him out, but that she doubted he was poor, and not worth looking after. This she did because of the next clause, which the jade had most mind to on many accounts.

II. That as to the Prince ; that, as above, he was gone into Germany, where his estate lay; that he had quitted the French service, and lived retired; that she had seen his gentleman, who remained at Paris to solicit his arrears, etc.; that he had given her an account how his lord had employed him to inquire for me and find me out, as above, and told her what pains he had taken to find me; that he had understood that I was gone to England; that he once had orders to go to England to find me; that his lord had resolved, if he could have found me, to have called me a countess, and so have married me, and have carried me into Germany with him; and that his commission was still to assure me that the prince would marry me if I would come to him, and that he would send him an account that he had found me, and did not doubt but he would have orders to come over to England to attend me in a figure suitable to my quality.

Amy, an ambitious jade, who knew my weakest part namely, that I loved great things, and that I loved to be flattered and courted said abundance of kind things upon this occasion, which she knew were suitable to me and would prompt my vanity; and talked big of the prince's gentleman having orders to come over to me with a procuration to marry me by proxy (as princes usually do in like cases), and to furnish me with an equipage, and I know not how many fine things; but told me, withal, that she had not yet let him know that she belonged to me still, or that she knew where to find me, or to write to me; because she was willing to see the bottom of it, and whether it was a reality or a gasconade. She had indeed told him that, if he had any such commission, she would endeavour to find me out, but no more.

III. For the Jew, she assured me that she had not been able to come at a certainty what was become of him, or in what part of the world he