and to whom
I was recommended. M. de Montaigu not being able to do without me, wrote
letter after letter, desiring I would hasten my journey; this, however,
an accident considerably prolonged.

It was at the time of the plague at Messina, and the English fleet had
anchored there, and visited the Felucca, on board of which I was, and
this circumstance subjected us, on our arrival, after a long and
difficult voyage, to a quarantine of one--and--twenty days.

The passengers had the choice of performing it on board or in the
Lazaretto, which we were told was not yet furnished. They all chose the
Felucca. The insupportable heat, the closeness of the vessel, the
impossibility of walking in it, and the vermin with which it swarmed,
made me at all risks prefer the Lazaretto. I was therefore conducted to
a large building of two stories, quite empty, in which I found neither
window, bed, table, nor chair, not so much as even a joint-stool or
bundle of straw. My night sack and my two trunks being brought me, I was
shut in by great doors with huge locks, and remained at full liberty to
walk at my ease from chamber to chamber and story to story, everywhere
finding the same solitude and nakedness.

This, however, did not induce me to repent that I had preferred the
Lazaretto to the Felucca; and, like another Robinson Crusoe, I began to
arrange myself for my one-and twenty days, just as I should have done for
my whole life. In the first place, I had the amusement of destroying the
vermin I had caught in the Felucca. As soon as I had got clear of these,
by means of changing my clothes and linen, I proceeded to furnish the
chamber I had chosen. I made a good mattress with my waistcoats and
shirts; my napkins I converted, by sewing them together, into sheets; my
robe de chambre into a counterpane; and my cloak into a pillow. I made
myself a seat with one of my trunks laid flat, and a table with the
other. I took out some writing paper and an inkstand, and distributed,
in the manner of a library, a dozen books which I had with me. In a
word, I so well arranged my few movables, that except curtains and
windows, I was almost as commodiously lodged in this Lazeretto,
absolutely empty as it was, as I had been at the Tennis Court in the Rue
Verdelet. My dinners were served with no small degree of pomp; they were
escorted by two grenadiers with bayonets fixed; the staircase was my
dining--room, the landing-place my table, and the