MY name is St. Hubert; my family ancient and respectable, though its do­mains, from various untoward events, had been contracted much within their former extent. I lost my father before I knew the misfortune of losing him; and the in­dulgence of my mother, who continued a widow, made up, in the estimation of a young man, for any want of that protec­tion or of guidance which another parent might have afforded. After having passed with applause through the ordinary studies which the capital of our province allowed [Page 10] an opportunity of acquiring, my mother sent me to Paris, along with the son of a neighboring family, who, though of less honorable descent, was much richer than ours. Young Delaserre, that was my com­panion's name, was intended for the army; I, from particular circumstances which promised success in that line, my mother and her friends had destined for the long robe, and had agreed for the purchase of a charge for me when I should be qualified for it. Delaserre had a sovereign contempt for any profession but that of arms, and took every opportunity of inspiring me with the same sentiments. In the capital I had this prejudice every day more and more confirmed. The fiertè of every man who had served, the insolent superiority he claimed over his fellow-citizens, daz­zled my ambition, and awed my bashfulness. From nature I had the extreme sensibility [Page 11] of shame, which could not stand against the ridicule even of much inferior men. Ignorance would often confound me in matters of which I was perfectly well in­formed, from his superior effrontery; and the best established principles of my mind would sometimes yield to the impudence of assuming sophistry, or of unblushing vice. To the profession which my relations had marked out for me, attention, diligence, and sober manners were naturally attach­ed; having once set down that profession as humiliating, I concluded its attendant qualities to be equally dishonorable. I was ashamed of virtues to which I was na­turally inclined, a bully in vices which I hated and despised. Delaserre enjoyed my apostacy from innocence as a victory he had gained. At school he was much my inferior, and I attained every rank of dis­tinction to which he had aspired in vain. [Page 12] In Paris he triumphed in his turn; his su­perior wealth enabled him to command the appearance of superior dignity and show; the cockade in his hat inspired a confidence which my situation did not al­low; and bold as he was in dissipation and debauchery, he led me as an inferior whom he taught the art of living, whom he had first trained to independence and to man­hood. My mother's ill-judged kindness sup­plied me with the means of those pleasures which my companions induced me to share, if pleasures they might be called, which I often partook with uneasiness, and reflect­ed on with remorse. Sometimes, though but too seldom, I was much a hypocrite on the other side; I was self denied, be­neficent, and virtuous by stealth; while the time and money which I had so em­ployed, I boasted to my companions of [Page 13] having spent in debauchery, in riot, and in vice.

The habits of life, however, into which I had been led, begun by degrees to blunt my natural feelings of rectitude, and to take from vice the restraints of conscience. But the dangerous connection I had form­ed was broken off by the accident of De­laserre's receiving orders to join his regi­ment, then quartered at Dunkirk. At his desire, I gave him the convoy as far as to a relation's house, in Picardy, where he was to spend a day or two in his way. ‘I will introduce you,’ said he in a tone of pleasantry, ‘because you will be a fa­vorite; my cousin Santonges is as sober and precise as you were when I first found you.’ The good man whom he thus characterised possessed indeed all those vir­tues of which the ridicule of Delaserre had sometimes made me ashamed, but [Page 14] which it had never made me entirely cease to revere. In his family I regained the sta­tion which, in our dissipated society at Pa­ris, I had lost. His example encouraged and his precepts fortified my natural dispo­sition to goodness; but his daughter, Emi­lia de Santonges, was a more interesting assistant to it. After my experience of the few of her sex with whom we were ac­quainted in town, the native beauty, the unaffected manners of Emilia, were infi­nitely attractive. Delaserre, however, found them insipid and tiresome. He left his kinsman's the third morning after his arrival, promising, as soon as his regiment should be reviewed, to meet me in Paris. Except in Paris, said he, we exist merely, but do not live. I found it very different. I lived but in the presence of Emilia de Santonges. But why should I recall those days of purest felicity, or think of what [Page 15] my Emilia was! For not long after she was mine. In the winter they came to Pairs, on account of her father's health, which was then rapidly on the decline. I tended him with that assiduity which was due to his friendship, which the company of Emi­lia made more an indulgence than a duty. Our cares, and the skill of his physicians, were fruitless. He died, and left his daughter to my friendship. It was then that I first dared to hope for her love; that over the grave of her father I mingled my tears with Emilia's, and tremblingly ven­tured to ask, if she thought me worthy of comforting her sorrows? Emilia was too innocent for disguise, too honest for affec­tation. She gave her hand to my virtues, for I then was virtuous, to reward at the same time, and to confirm them. We re­tired to Santonges, where we enjoyed as much felicity as perhaps the lot of humanity [Page 16] will allow. My Emilia's merit was equal to her happiness; and I may say without vanity, since it is now my shame, that the since wretched St. Hubert was then thought to deserve the blessings he enjoyed.

In this state of peaceful felicity we had lived something more than a year, when my Emilia found herself with child. On that occasion my anxiety was such as a husband who dotes upon his wife may be supposed to feel. In consequence of that anxiety, I proposed our removing for some weeks to Paris, where she might have abler assistance than our province could afford in those moments of danger which she soon expected. To this she objected with earnestness, from a variety of motives; but most of my neighbors applauded my re­solution; and one, who was the nephew of a farmer-general, and had purchased the estate on which his father had been a [Page 17] tenant, told me, the danger from their country accoucheurs was such, that nobody who could afford to go to Paris would think of trusting them. I was a little ten­der on the reproach of poverty, and abso­lutely determined for the journey. To induce my wife's consent I had another pretext, being left executor to a friend who had died in Paris, and had effects remaining there. Emilia at last consented, and we removed to town accordingly.

For some time I scarce ever left our hotel: It was the same at which Emilia and her father had lodged when he came to Paris to die, and leave her to my love. The recollection of those scenes, tender and interesting as they were, spread a sort of melancholy indulgence over our mutual society, by which the company of any third person could scarcely be brooked. My wife had some of those sad presages [Page 18] which women of her sensibility often feel in the condition she was then in. All my attention and solicitude were excited to combat her fears. "I shall not live," she would say, ‘to revisit Santonges: but my Henry will think of me there: In those woods in which we have so often walked, by that brook, to the fall of which we have listened together, and felt in silence what language, at least what mine, my love, could not speak.’

The anxiety of my Emilia was at last dissipated by her safe delivery of a boy; and on this object of a new kind of ten­derness we gazed with inexpressible de­light. Emilia suckled the infant herself, as well from the idea of duty and of pleasure in tending it, as from the dif­ficulty of finding in Paris a nurse to be trusted. We proposed returning to the [Page 19] country as soon as the re-establishment of her strength would permit. Meantime, during her hours of rest, I generally went to finish the business which the trust of my deceased friend had devolved upon me.

In passing through the Thuilleries, in one of those walks, I met my old compa­nion Delaserre. He embraced me with a degree of warmth which I scarce expected from my knowledge of his disposition, or the length of time for which our corres­pondence had been broken off. He had heard, he said, accidentally of my being in town, but had sought me for several days in vain. In truth, he was of all men one whom I was the most afraid of meet­ing. I had heard in the country of his unbounded dissipation and extravagance; and there were some stories to his preju­dice which were only not believed, from an unwillingness to believe them in people [Page 20] whom the corruptions of the world had not familiarised to baseness; yet I found he still possessed a kind of superiority over my mind, which I was glad to excuse, by forcing myself to think him less unworthy than he was reported. After a variety of inquiries, and expressing his cordial satis­faction at the present happiness I enjoyed, he pressed me to spend that evening with him so earnestly, that though I had made it a sort of rule to be at home, I was ashamed to offer an apology, and agreed to meet him at the hour he appointed.

Our company consisted only of Delaserre himself, and two other officers, one a good deal older than any of us, who had the cross of St. Louis, and the rank of colo­nel, whom I thought the most agreeable man I had ever met with. The unwilling­ness with which I had left home, and the expectation of a very different sort of [Page 21] party where I was going, made me feel the present one doubly pleasant. My spi­rits, which were rather low when I went in, from that constraint I was prepared for, rose in proportion to the pleasantry around me, and the perfect ease in which I found myself with this old officer, who had in­formation, wit, sentiment, every thing I valued most, and every thing I least ex­pected in a society selected by Delaserre. It was late before we parted; and at part­ing we received, not without pleasure, an invitation from the colonel to sup with him the evening after.

The company at his house I found en­livened by his sister and a friend of hers, a widow, who, though not a perfect beauty, had a countenance that impressed one more in her favour than mere beauty could. When silent, there was a certain softness in it infinitely bewitching; and when it was [Page 22] lightened up by the expression which her conversation gave, it was equally attractive. We happened to be placed next each other. Unused as I was to the little gallantries of fashionable life, I rather wished than hoped to make myself agreeable to her. She seemed, however, interested in my atten­tions and conversation, and in hers I found myself flattered and delighted. We played, against the inclination of this lady and me, and we won rather more than I wished. Had I been as rich as Delaserre, I should have objected to the deepness of the stakes: but we were the only persons of the com­pany that seemed uneasy at our success, and we parted with the most cordial good humour. Madame de Trenville, that was the widow's name, smiling to the colonel, asked him to take his revenge at her house, and said, with an air of equal modesty and frankness, that as I had been the partner [Page 23] of her success, she hoped for the honor of my company, to take the chance of sharing a less favorable fortune.

At first my wife had expressed her satis­faction at my finding amusement in soci­ety, to relieve the duty of attending her. But when my absence grew very frequent, as indeed I was almost every day at ma­dame de Trenville's, though her words continued the same, she could not help expressing by her countenance her dissatis­faction at my absence. I perceived this at first with tenderness only, and next even­ing excused myself from keeping my en­gagement. But I found my wife's com­pany not what it used to be: thoughtful, but afraid to trust one another with our thoughts, Emilia shewed her uneasiness in her looks, and I covered mine but ill with assumed gaity of appearance.

[Page 24] The day following Delaserre called, and saw Emilia for the first time. He rallied me gently for breaking my last night's ap­pointment, and told me of another which he had made for me, which my wife in­sisted on my keeping. Her cousin applaud­ed her conduct, and joked on the good government of wives. Before I went out in the evening, I came to wish Emilia a good night. I thought I perceived a tear on her cheek, and would have staid, but for the shame of not going. The compa­ny perceived my want of gaity, and De­laserre was merry on the occasion. Even my friend the colonel threw in a little raillery on the subject of marriage. 'Twas the first time I felt somewhat awkward at being the only married man of the party.

We played deeper and sat later than formerly; but I was to shew myself not afraid of my wife, and objected to neither. [Page 25] I lost considerably, and returned home mortified and chagrined. I saw Emilia next morning, whose spirits were not high. Methought her looks reproached my con­duct, and I was enough in the wrong to be angry that they did so. Delaserre came to take me to his house to dinner. He observed as he went that Emilia looked ill. ‘Going to the country will re-esta­blish her,’ said I—‘Do you leave Pa­ris?’ said he.—‘In a few days.’—‘Had I such motives for remaining in it as you have.’—‘What motives?’—‘The attachment of such friends; but friendship is a cold word: the attach­ment of such a woman as de Trenville.’ I know not how I looked, but he pressed the subject no farther; perhaps I was less offended than I ought to have been.

We went to that lady's house after din­ner. She was dressed most elegantly, and [Page 26] looked more beautiful than ever I had seen her. The party was more numerous than usual, and there was more vivacity in it. The conversation turned upon my inten­tion of leaving Paris; the ridicule of coun­try manners, of country opinions, of the insipidity of country enjoyments, was kept up with infinite spirit by Delaserre, and most of the younger members of the com­pany. Madame de Trenville did not join in their mirth, and sometimes looked at me as if the subject was too serious for her to be merry on. I was half ashamed and half sorry that I was going to the country; less uneasy than vain at the preference that was shewn me.

I was a coward, however, in the wrong as well as in the right, and fell upon an expedient to screen myself from a disco­very that might have saved me. I contriv­ed to deceive my wife, and to conceal my [Page 27] visits to madam de Trenville's, under the pretence of some perplexing incidents that had arisen in the management of those af­fairs with which I was intrusted. Her mind was too pure for suspicion or for jea­lousy. It was easy even for a novice in falsehood, like me, to deceive her. But I had an able assistant in Delaserre, who now resumed the ascendency over me he had formerly possessed, but with an attrac­tion more powerful, from the infatuated attachment which my vanity and weak­ness, as much as her art and beauty, had made me conceive for madame de Tren­ville.

It happened, that just at this time a young man arrived from our province, and brought letters for Emilia from a fe­male friend of hers in the neighborhood of Santonges. He had been bred a minia­ture painter, and came to town for im­provement [Page 28] in his art. Emilia, who doted on her little boy, proposed to him to draw his picture in the innocent attitude of his sleep. The young painter was pleased with the idea, provided she would allow him to paint the child in her arms. This was to be concealed from me, for the sake of surprising me with the picture when it should be finished. That she might have a better opportunity of effecting this little concealment, Emilia would often hear, with a sort of satisfaction, my engagements abroad, and encourage me to keep them, that the picture might advance in my ab­sence.

She knew not what, during that ab­sence, was my employment. The slave of vice and of profusion, I was violating my faith to her, in the arms of the most artful and worthless of women, and losing the fortune that should have supported my [Page 29] child and hers, to a set of cheats and vil­lains. Such was the snare that Delaserre and his associates had drawn around me. It was covered with the appearance of love and generosity. De Trenville had art enough to make me believe, that she was every way the victim of her affection for me. My first great losses at play she pre­tended to reimburse from her own private fortune, and then threw herself upon my honor, for relief from those distresses into which I had brought her. After having exhausted all the money I possessed, and all my credit could command, I would have stopped short of ruin; but when I thought of returning in disgrace and poverty to the place I had left respected and happy, I had not resolution enough to retreat. I took refuge in desperation, mortgaged the re­mains of my estate, and staked the pro­duce to recover what I had lost, or to lose [Page 30] myself. The event was such as might have been expected.

After the dizzy horror of my situation had left me power to think, I hurried to madame de Trenville's. She gave me such a reception as suited one who was no lon­ger worth the deceiving. Conviction of her falsehood, and of that ruin to which she had been employed to lead me, flashed upon my mind. I left her with execra­tions, which she received with the coolness of hardened vice, of experienced seduction. I rushed from her house, I knew not whi­ther. My steps involuntarily led me home. At my own door I stopped, as if it had been death to enter. When I had shrunk back some paces, I turned again; twice did I attempt to knock, and could not; my heart throbbed with unspeakable hor­ror, and my knees smote each other. It was night, and the street was dark and [Page 31] silent around me. I threw myself down before the door, and wished some ruffian's hand to ease me of life and thought toge­ther. At last the recollection of Emilia, and of my infant boy, crossed my disor­dered mind, and a gush of tenderness burst from my eyes. I rose, and knocked at the door. When I was let in, I went up softly to my wife's chamber. She was asleep, with a night-lamp burning by her, her child sleeping on her bosom, and its little hand grasping her neck. Think what I felt as I looked! She smiled through her sleep, and seemed to cream of happiness. My brain began to madden again; and as the misery to which she must wake crossed my imagination, the horrible idea rose within me,—I shudder yet to tell it!—to murder them as they lay, and next my­self!—I stretched my hand towards my wife's throat!—The infant unclasped its [Page 32] little fingers, and laid hold of one of mine. The gentle pressure wrung my heart; its softness returned; I burst into tears; but I could not stay to tell her of our ruin. I rushed out of the room, and, gaining an obscure hotel in a distant part of the town, wrote a few distracted lines, acquainting her of my folly and of my crimes; that I meant immediately to leave France, and not return till my penitence should wipe out my offence, and my in­dustry repair that ruin in which I had in­volved her. I recommended her and my child to my mother's care, and to the pro­tection of heaven which she had never of­fended. Having sent this, I left Paris on the instant, and had walked several miles from town before it was light. At sun-rise a stage-coach overtook me. 'Twas going on the road to Brest. I entered it without arranging any future plan, and sat in sullen [Page 33] and gloomy silence, in the corner of the carriage. That day and next night I went on mechanically, with several other pas­sengers, regardless of food, and incapable of rest. But the second day I found my strength fail, and when we stopped in the evening, I fell down in a faint in the pas­sage of the inn. I was put to bed, it seems, and lay for more than a week in the stupe­faction of a low fever.

A charitable brother of that order to which I now belong, who happened to be at the inn, attended me with the greatest care and humanity; and when I began to recover, the good old man ministered to my soul, as he had done to my body, that assistance and consolation he easily disco­vered it to need. By his tender assiduities I was now so far recruited as to be able to breathe the fresh air at the window of a little parlor. As I sat there one morning, [Page 34] the same stage-coach in which I had arriv­ed, stopped at the door of the inn, when I saw alight out of it the young painter who had been recommended to us at Paris. The sight overpowered my weakness, and I fell lifeless from my seat. The incident brought several people into the room, and amongst others the young man himself. When they had restored me to sense, I had recollection enough to desire him to remain with me alone. It was some time before he recognized me; when he did, with hor­ror in his aspect, after much hesitation, and the most solemn intreaty from me, he told me the dreadful sequel of my mis­fortunes. My wife and child were no more. The shock which my letter gave, the state of weakness she was then in, she had not strength to support. The effects were a fever, delirium, and death. Her infant perished with her. In the interval of rea­son [Page 35] preceding her death, she called him to her bed-side; gave him the picture he had drawn; and with her last breath charged him, if ever he could find me out, to de­liver that and her forgiveness to me. He put it into my hand. I know not how I survived. Perhaps it was owing to the outworn state in which my disease had left me. My heart was too weak to burst; and there was a sort of palsy on my mind that seemed insensible to its calamities. By that holy man who had once before saved me from death, I was placed here, where, except one melancholy journey to that spot where they had laid my Emilia and her boy, I have ever since remained. My story is unknown, and they wonder at the severity of that life by which I endea­vor to atone for my offences. But it is not by suffering alone that heaven is recon­ciled; I endeavor, by works of charity [Page 36] and beneficence, to make my being not hateful in its sight. Blessed be God! I have attained the consolation I wished.—Alrea­dy, on my wasting days, a beam of mercy sheds its celestial light.

The visions of this flinty couch are changed to mildness. 'Twas but last night my Emilia beckoned me in smiles; this little cherub was with her!

If the world allure thee, if vice ensnare with its pleasures, or abash with its ridi­cule, think of father Nicholas—‘be vir­tuous, and be happy.’