The first had been written by himself, about twenty years before the period of which we now speak. So striking was the contrast between his life then,—a life calm, happy, and smiling,—and the life of a pirate and murderer, that one might be moved to pity the unhappy man, if only by comparing him as he was, to what he had been in the past.
The height from which he had fallen, the depth of infamy to which he had descended, must have moved the most obdurate heart to pity!
These letters will unveil also what mysterious tie united the Commander des Anbiez, Erebus, and Pog, to whom we restore his real name, that of Count Jacques de Montreuil, former lieutenant of the king’s galleys.
M. de Montreuil—Pog—had written the following letter to his wife on his return from a campaign of eight or nine months in the Mediterranean.
This letter was dated from the lazaretto, or pest-house, in Marseilles.
The galley of Count de Montreuil, having touched at Tripoli, of Syria, where the plague had been declared, was compelled according to custom to submit to a long quarantine.
Madame Emilie de Montreuil lived in a country house situated on the borders of the Rhone, near Lyons.
First Letter.
“Lazaretto de Marseilles, December 10,1612.
“On board the Capitaine.