h him at all
risks and sacrifices, that he felt certain she would be after him as
soon as she discovered his absence. He had formed a wild scheme of
returning to Amsterdam, and haunting his family until, through mere
weariness and vexation, they supplied him with funds for all outfit to
Sumatra. There he trusted to redeem his fortunes, as he had heard that
others of no greater abilities or better character than himself had
already done. A more extravagant project was never formed, and indeed
all his acts, during the six weeks that followed his marriage, were more
or less eccentric and ill-judged. This he admitted, when relating them
to me, and probably would not have been sorry to place them to the score
of actual mental derangement. The only redeeming touch in his conduct,
at that, the blackest period of his life, was his leaving, as I have
already mentioned, what money he had to his wife and her mother,
reserving but a few florins for his own support.

With these in his pocket, he proposed proceeding on foot to Amsterdam.
After landing on the right bank of the Rhine, he walked the greater part
of the night, as the best means of drying his saturated garments. When
weariness at last compelled him to pause, it was not yet daylight, no
house was open, and he threw himself on some straw in a farm-yard. He
awoke in a high fever, the result of his immersion, of exposure and
fatigue, acting on a frame heated and weakened by anxiety and mental
suffering. He obtained shelter at the neighboring farm-house, whose
kind-hearted inhabitants carefully tended him for several weeks, during
which his life was more than once despaired of. His convalescence was
long, and not till the close of the year could he resume his journey
northwards, by short stages, chiefly on foot. Unfavourable as his
prospects were, his good star had not yet set. This very illness, as
occasioning a delay, was a stroke of good fortune. Had he at once
proceeded to Holland, his family, in hopes to get rid of him for ever,
would probably have given him the small sum he needed for an outfit to
the Indian Archipelago, and he would have sailed thither before the 31st
of December, on which day his father, a joyous liver, and confirmed
votary of Bacchus, eat and drank to such an extent to celebrate the exit
of the old year and commencement of the new, that he fell down, on his
way to his bed, in a thundering fit of apoplexy, and was a corpse before
morning. The day of hi