Francis continued his journey towards Anvers most gaily, wishing as he went, that he might every where meet with as good a reception as at the chevalier Bronkhorst’s.
Nothing remarkable occurred during the rest of his journey, and he entered the city full of the most sanguine hopes and expectations. In every street his fancied riches stared him in the face. “It appears to me,” said he, “that some of my father’s debtors must have succeeded in business, and that they will only require my presence, to repay their debts with honour.”
After having rested from the fatigue of his journey, he made himself acquainted with every particular relative to the debtors, and learnt that the greater part had become rich, and were doing extremely well. This intelligence re-animated his hopes; he arranged his papers, and paid a visit to each of the persons who owed him any thing. But his success was by no means equal to what he had expected; some of the debtors pretended that they had paid every thing; others that they had never heard mention of Melchior of Bremen; and the rest produced accounts precisely contradictory to those he had, and which tended to prove they were creditors instead of debtors. In fine, ere three days had elapsed, Francis found himself in the debtor’s prison, from whence he stood no chance of being released till he had paid the uttermost farthing of his father’s debts.
How pitiable was this young man’s condition! Even the horrors of the prison were augmented by the remembrance of Meta:—nay, to such a pitch of desperation was he carried, that he resolved to starve himself. Fortunately, however, at twenty-seven years of age such determinations are more easily formed, than practised.
The intention of those who put him into confinement was not merely with a view of exacting payment of his pretended debts, but to avoid paying him his due; so, whether the prayers put up for poor Francis at Bremeu were effectual, or that the pretended creditors were not disposed to maintain him during his life, I know not; but after a detention of three months, they liberated Francis from prison, with a particular injunction to quit the territories of Anvers within four-and-twenty hours, and never to set his foot within that city again:—They gave him at the same time five florins to defray his expenses on the road. As one may well imagine his horse and baggage had been sold to defray the costs incident to the proceedings.
With a heart overloaded with grief he quitted Anvers, in a very different frame of mind to what he experienced at entering it. Discouraged and irresolute, he mechanically followed the road which chance directed; he paid no attention to the various travellers, nor indeed to any object on the road, till hunger or thirst caused him to lift up his eyes to discover a steeple or some other token announcing the habitation of human beings. In this state of mind did he continue journeying on for several days incessantly; nevertheless, a secret instinct impelled him to take the road leading to his own country.
All on a sudden he roused, as if from a profound sleep, and recollected the place in which he was: he stopped an instant to consider whether he should continue the road he was then in, or return: “For,” said he, “what a shame to return to my native city a beggar!” How could he thus return to that city in which he formerly felt equal to the richest of its inhabitants? How could he as a beggar present himself before Meta, without causing her to blush for the choice she had made? He did not allow time for his imagination to complete this miserable picture, for he instantly turned back, as if already he had found himself before the gates of Bremen, followed by the shouts of the children. His mind was soon made up as to what he should do; he resolved to go to one of the ports of the Low Countries, there to engage himself as a sailor on board of a Spanish vessel, to go to the newly-discovered world; and not to return to his native country till he had amassed as much wealth as he had formerly so thoughtlessly squandered. In the whole of this project, Meta was only thought of at an immeasurable distance; but Francis contented himself with connecting her in idea with his future plans, and walked, or rather strode along, as if by hurrying his pace he should sooner gain possession of her.
Having thus attained the frontiers of the Low Countries, he arrived at sun-set in a village situated near Rheinburg; but since entirely destroyed in the thirty years’ war. A caravan of carriers from Liege filled the inn so entirely, that the landlord told Francis he could not give him a lodging; adding, that at the adjoining village he would find accommodations.—Possibly he was actuated to this refusal by Francis’s appearance, who certainly, in point of garb, might well be mistaken for a vagabond.
The landlord took him for a spy to a band of thieves, sent probably to rob carriers; so that poor Francis, in spite of his extreme lassitude, was compelled, with his wallet at his back, to proceed on his road; and having at his departure, muttered through his teeth some maledictions against the cruel and unfeeling landlord, the latter appeared touched with compassion for the stranger, and from the door of the inn called after him: “Young man—a word with you! If you resolve on passing the night here, I will procure you a lodging in that castle you now see on the hill; there you will find rooms in abundance, provided you are not afraid of being alone, for it is uninhabited. See, here are the keys belonging to it.”
Francis joyfully accepted the landlord’s proposition, and thanked him for it as if it had been an act of great charity.