Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress. Даниэль ДефоЧитать онлайн книгу.
was so pleased with this offer that he told me he would give me full satisfaction for it, and accept of it too. So he took me to London with him the next day, and there he made his will, and showed it to me, sealed it before proper witnesses, and then gave it to me to keep. In this will he gave a thousand pounds to a person that we both knew very well, in trust, to pay it, with the interest from the time of his decease, to me or my assigns; then he willed the payment of my jointure, as he called it, viz. his bond of a hundred pounds, after his death, also he gave me all my household stuff, plate, etc.
This was a most engaging thing for a man to do to one under my circumstances, and it would have been hard, as I told him, to deny him anything or to refuse to go with him anywhere. So we settled everything as well as we could, left Amy in charge of the house, and for his other business, which was in jewels, he had two men he entrusted, whom he had good security for, and who managed for him and corresponded with him.
Things being thus concerted, we went away to France, arrived safe at Calais, and by easy journeys came in eight days more to Paris, where we lodged in the house of an English merchant of his acquaintance and were very courteously entertained.
My gentleman's business was with some persons of the first rank, and to whom he had sold some jewels of very good value and received a great sum of money in specie, and, as he told me privately, he gained 3,000 pistoles by his bargain, but would not suffer the most intimate friend he had there to know what he had received, for it is not so safe a thing in Paris to have a great sum of money in keeping, as it might be in London.
We made this journey much longer than we intended, and my gentleman sent for one of his managers in London to come over to us to Paris with some diamonds, and sent him back to London again to fetch more. Then other business fell into his hands so unexpectedly, that I began to think we should take up our constant residence there, which I was not very averse to, it being my native country, and I spoke the language perfectly well. So we took a good house in Paris and lived very well there, and I sent for Amy to come over to me; for I lived gallantly, and my gentleman was two or three times going to keep me a coach, but I declined it, especially at Paris; but as they have those conveniences by the day there at a certain rate, I had an equipage provided for me whenever I pleased, and I lived here in a very good figure, and might have lived higher if I pleased.
But in the middle of all this felicity a dreadful disaster befell me, which entirely unhinged all my affairs and threw me back into the same state of life that I was in before; with this one happy exception, however, that whereas before I was poor even to misery, now I was not only provided for, but very rich.
My gentleman had the name in Paris for a very rich man, and indeed he was so, though not so immensely rich as people imagined; but that which was fatal to him was that he generally carried a shagreen case in his pocket, especially when he went to court or to the houses of any of the princes of the blood, in which he had jewels of very great value.
It happened one day, that being to go to Versailles to wait upon the Prince of ----, he came up into my chamber in the morning and laid out his jewel case, because he was not going to show any jewels, but to get a foreign bill accepted which he had received from Amsterdam. So when he gave me the case, he said, "My dear, I think I need not carry this with me, because it may be I may not come back till night, and it is too much to venture." I returned "Then, my dear, you shan't go." "Why?" says he. "Because as they are too much for you, so you are too much for me to venture, and you shall not go unless you will promise me not to stay, so as to come back in the night."
"I hope there's no danger," said he, "seeing I have nothing about me of any value; and therefore, lest I should, take that too," says he, and gives me his gold watch, and a rich diamond which he had in a ring and always wore on his finger.
"Well, but, my dear," says I, "you make me more uneasy now than before, for if you apprehend no danger, why do you use this caution? and if you apprehend there is danger, why do you go at all?"
"There is no danger," says he, "if I do not stay late, and I do not design to do so."
"Well, but promise me, then, that you won't," says I, "or else I cannot let you go."
"I won't indeed, my dear," says he, "unless I am obliged to it. I assure you I do not intend it, but if I should, I am not worth robbing now, for I have nothing about me but about six pistoles in my little purse, and that little ring," showing me a small diamond ring, worth about ten or twelve pistoles, which he put upon his finger in the room of the rich one he usually wore.
I still pressed him not to stay late, and he said he would not. "But if I am kept late," says he, "beyond my expectation, I'll stay all night and come next morning." This seemed a very good caution, but still my mind was very uneasy about him, and I told him so, and entreated him not to go. I told him I did not know what might be the reason, but that I had a strange terror upon my mind about his going, and that, if he did go, I was persuaded some harm would attend him. He smiled, and returned, "Well, my dear, if it should be so, you are now richly provided for; all that I have here I give to you." And with that he takes up the casket or case. "Here," says he, "hold your hand, there is a good estate for you in this case; if anything happens to me, 'tis all your own, I give it you for yourself." And with that he put the casket, the fine ring, and his gold watch all into my hands, and the key of his escritoire besides, adding, "And in my escritoire there is some money; 'tis all your own."
I stared at him as if I was frighted, for I thought all his face looked like a death's head, and then immediately I thought I perceived his head all bloody, and then his clothes looked bloody too; and immediately it all went off and he looked as he really did. Immediately I fell a-crying and hung about him. "My dear," said I, "I am frighted to death; you shall not go; depend upon it, some mischief will befall you." I did not tell him how my vapourish fancy had represented him to me; that, I thought, was not proper; besides, he would only have laughed at me, and would have gone away with a jest about it. But I pressed him seriously not to go that day, or, if he did, to promise me to come home to Paris again by daylight. He looked a little graver then than he did before, told me he was not apprehensive of the least danger; but if there was, he would either take care to come in the day or, as he had said before, would stay all night.
But all these promises came to nothing, for he was set upon in the open day and robbed by three men on horseback, masked, as he went; and one of them, who it seems rifled him while the rest stood to stop the coach, stabbed him into the body with a sword, so that he died immediately. He had a footman behind the coach whom they knocked down with the stock or butt end of a carbine. They were supposed to kill him because of the disappointment they met with in not getting his case or casket of diamonds, which they knew he carried about him; and this was supposed, because after they had killed him they made the coachman drive out of the road a long way over the heath till they came to a convenient place, where they pulled him out of the coach and searched his clothes more narrowly than they could do while he was alive.
But they found nothing but his little ring, six pistoles, and the value of about seven livres in small moneys.
This was a dreadful blow to me, though I cannot say I was so surprised as I should otherwise have been; for all the while he was gone my mind was oppressed with the weight of my own thoughts, and I was as sure that I should never see him any more, that I think nothing could be like it; the impression was so strong, that I think nothing could make so deep a wound that was imaginary, and I was so dejected and disconsolate, that when I received the news of his disaster, there was no room for any extraordinary alteration in me. I had cried all that day, ate nothing, and only waited, as I might say, to receive the dismal news, which I had brought to me about five o'clock in the afternoon.
Chapter 5
I was in a strange country, and, though I had a pretty many acquaintances, had but very few friends that I could consult on this occasion. All possible enquiry was made after the rogues that had been thus barbarous, but nothing could be heard of them; nor was it possible that the footman could make any discovery of them by his description, for they knocked him