Page:The Adventures of David Simple (1904).djvu/275

 discourse affected me, and therefore said no more.

"'As soon as I had time to reflect by myself on the present condition of my affairs, I began seriously to consider what I should do; for I was resolved in some shape or other to support my mother. My thoughts immediately turned on you, my dear Marquis de Stainville, and I made no doubt but in your friendship I should meet with an asylum from all my cares and afflictions. I then wrote the letter I have already mentioned to you; it was not at all in the style of a poor man to his patron, but rather rejoicing that I had an opportunity of giving you what I thought the highest pleasure in the world, that of relieving your friend from the insupportable calamity of having a helpless and distressed mother upon his handehands [sic], without its being in my power to help her. "'When I had sent away my letter, I got credit for a little house, where I placed my mother; but as soon as I thought it possible for me to have an answer, I cannot describe the anxious hours I passed; every moment seemed a thousand; day after day was I in this situation, and no letter came to comfort me. Forgive me, my dear friend; nothing could have given me any suspicion of you at another time; but now everything seemed so much my enemy that I thought you so too. When I remembered our tender parting, tears would start into my eyes; and I thought to have you forsake me, because I wanted fortune, was more than I could bear: yet in the midst of all this trouble I am obliged to struggle and appear cheerful, to keep up my poor mother's sinking spirits. To tell you the variety of misery I went through would make my story tedious, and be shocking to your natures; when I thought my Stainville had forsaken me, the neglect of all my other professed friends was trifliugtrifling [sic]. The insults of my creditors I could have supported,