Captain Combes replies that he can. There is a difficulty, however. Captain Combes and his good ship Vigilant are in debt to the Dutch in the sum of five hundred guilders. If Aaron will advance the sum, it shall be repaid the moment the Vigilant’s anchors are down in New York mud. Aaron advances the five hundred guilders. The Vigilant sails out of the Helder with Aaron a passenger. Once in blue water, the Vigilant is swooped upon by an English frigate, which carries her gayly into Yarmouth, a prize.
Aaron writes to the English Alien Office, relates how his homeward voyage has been brought to an end, and asks permission to go ashore. Since England has somewhat lost interest in Spain, and is on the threshold of war with the United States, her objections to Aaron expressed aforetime by Lord Liverpool have cooled. Aaron will not now “embarrass his Majesty’s Government.” He is granted permission to land; indeed, as though to make amends for a past rudeness, the English Government offers Aaron every courtesy. Thus he goes to London, and is instantly in the midst of Bentham, Godwin, Mulgrave, Canning, Cobbett, and the rest of his old friends.
Aaron’s funds are at their old Parisian ebb; that loan to Captain Combes, which ransomed the Vigilant from the Dutch, well-nigh bankrupted him. He got to like poverty in France, however, and does not repine. He refuses to go home with Bentham, and takes to cheap London lodgings instead. He explains to the fussy, kindly philosopher that his sole purpose now is to watch for a home-bound ship, and he can keep no sharp lookout from Barrow Green.
Once in his poor lodgings, Aaron resumes that iron economy he learned to practice in Paris. He sets down this in his diary:
“On my way home discovered that I must dine. I find my appetite in the inverse ratio to my purse, and I can now conceive why the poor eat so much when they can get it. Considering the state of my finances, I bought half a pound of boiled beef, eightpence; a quarter of a pound of ham, sixpence; one pound of brown sugar, eightpence; two pounds of bread, eight-pence; ten pounds of potatoes, fivepence; and then, treating myself to a pot of ale, eightpence, proceeded to read the second volume of ‘Ida.’ As I read, I boiled my potatoes, and made a great dinner, eating half my beef. Of the two necessaries, coffee and tobacco, I have at least a week’s allowance, so that without spending another penny, I can keep the machinery going for eight days.”
At last Aaron’s money is nearly gone. He makes a memorandum of the stringency in this wise:
“Dined at the Hole in the Wall off a chop. Had two halfpence left, which are better than a penny would be, because they jingle, and thus one may refresh one’s self with the music.”
Aaron, at this pinch in his fortunes, seeks out a friendly bibliophile, and sells him an armful of rare books. In this manner he lifts himself to affluence, since he receives sixty pounds.
Practicing his economies, and filling his treasury by the sale of his books, Aaron is still the center of a brilliant circle. He goes everywhere, is received everywhere; for in England poverty comes not amiss with the honor of an exile, and is held to be no drawing-room bar. Exiled opulence, on the other hand, is at once the subject of gravest British suspicions.
That Aaron’s experiences have not warmed him toward France, finds exhibition one evening at Holland House. He is in talk with the inquisitive Lord Balgray, who asks about Napoleon and France.