Page:The Adventures of David Simple (1904).djvu/261

 happy situation. In short, as soon as Isabelle was stirring the following day, she was persuaded to join the company; and, after breakfast, went on with her story as follows.

" the death of my favourite companion, I had an aversion to the thoughts of all lovers; and although my father had several proposals for me, yet I utterly rejected them, and begged him, as the only means to make me go through life with any tolerable ease, that I might be permitted to spend my time at his villa in solitude and retirement. His fondness for me prevailed on him to comply with my request, and time began to make my late affliction subside. I had besides a dawn of comfort in the company of my brother, who, notwithstanding his youth and being a Frenchman, was of so grave and philosophical a temper, that he, having now finished his studies, like me, preferred the enjoying his own thoughts in ease and quiet to all the gay amusements and noisy pomp which were to be met with in Paris. Though we had never been bred together, yet the present sympathy of our tempers (for I was become as grave, from the late accident which had befallen me, as he was from nature) led us to contract the strictest friendship for each other. All sprightliness was now vanished, and I had no other pleasure but in my brother's indulging me to converse with him on serious subjects: with this amusement I began to be contented, and to find returning ease flow in upon my mind. But this was more than I was long permitted to enjoy; for whilst I was in this situation, one evening, as my father was coming from Paris, he got a fall from