"At the opening of the Revolution, I told you, he became a champion of the people. By his zeal and his efforts he acquired such importance as to be deputed to the National Assembly. In this post he was the adherent of violent measures, till the subversion of monarchy; and then, when too late for his safety, he checked his career."
"And what has since become of him?"
She sighed deeply. "You were yesterday reading a list of the proscribed under Robespierre. I checked you. I had good reason. But this subject grows too painful; let us change it."
Some time after, I ventured to renew this topic; and discovered that Fielding, under his new name of Perrin d'Almont, was among the outlawed deputies of last year,[1] and had been slain in resisting the officers sent to arrest him. My friend had been informed that his wife, Marguerite d'Almont, whom she had reason to believe a woman of great merit, had eluded persecution, and taken refuge in some part of America. She had made various attempts, but in vain, to find out her retreat. "Ah!" said I, "you must commission me to find her. I will hunt her through the continent from Penobscot to Savannah. I will not leave a nook unsearched."
[1] 1793.
CHAPTER XLVII.
None will be surprised that, to a woman thus unfortunate and thus deserving, my heart willingly rendered up all its sympathies; that, as I partook of all her grief, I hailed, with equal delight, those omens of felicity which now, at length, seemed to play in her fancy.
I saw her often,—as often as my engagements would permit, and oftener than I allowed myself to visit any other. In this I was partly selfish. So much entertainment, so much of the best instruction, did her conversation afford me, that I never had enough of it.
Her experience had been so much larger than mine, and so wholly different, and she possessed such unbounded facility of recounting all she had seen and felt, and absolute sincerity and unreserve in this respect were so fully established between us, that I can imagine nothing equally instructive and delightful with her conversation.