Page:Moll Flanders (1906 edition).djvu/460

428 I soon discharged my lodgings and went with Isabel to Amsterdam, where I thought, as I was advanced in years, to give up all I could raise in the world, and on the sale of everything I had to go into one of the Proveniers' houses, where I should be settled for life. But as I could not produce enough money for it, I turned it into a coffee-house near the Stadt-house, where I might have done well; but as soon as I was settled one of my Hague creditors arrested me for a debt of £75, and I, not having a friend in the world of whom to raise the money, was, in a shameful condition, carried to the common jail, where poor Isabel followed me with showers of tears, and left me inconsolable for my great misfortunes. Here, without some very unforeseen accident, I shall never go out of it until I am carried to my grave, for which my much-offended God prepare me as soon as possible.

After my lady, as it was my duty to call her, was thrown into jail for a debt she was unable to pay, she gave her mind wholly up to devotion. Whether it was from a thorough sense of her wretched state, or any other reason, I could never learn; but this I may say, that she was a sincere penitent, and in every action had all the behaviour of a Christian. By degrees all the things she had in the world were sold, and she began to find an inward decay upon her spirits. In this interval she repeated all the passages of her ill-spent life to me, and thoroughly repented of every bad action, especially the little value she had for her children, which were honestly born and bred. And having, as she believed, made her peace with God, she died with mere grief on the 2nd of July 1742, in the sixty-fifth year of her age, and was decently buried by me in the churchyard belonging to the Lutherans, in the city of Amsterdam.

THE END Printed in Great Britain by Butler & Tanner Ltd., Frome and London