s, have
a firm belief that these people will be saved, and that they are the
instruments of it; and on this account they undergo not only the fatigue
of the voyage, and the hazards of living in such places, but oftentimes
death itself, and the most violent tortures, for the sake of this work.

Father Simon was appointed, it seems, by order of the chief of the
mission, to go up to Pekin, and waited only for another priest, who was
ordered to come to him from Macao, to go along with him. We scarce ever
met together but he was inviting me to go that journey; telling me how he
would show me all the glorious things of that mighty empire, and, among
the rest, Pekin, the greatest city in the world: "A city," said he, "that
your London and our Paris put together cannot be equal to." But as I
looked on those things with different eyes from other men, so I shall
give my opinion of them in a few words, when I come in the course of my
travels to speak more particularly of them.

Dining with Father Simon one day, and being very merry together, I showed
some little inclination to go with him; and he pressed me and my partner
very hard to consent. "Why, father," says my partner, "should you desire
our company so much? you know we are heretics, and you do not love us,
nor cannot keep us company with any pleasure."--"Oh," says he, "you may
perhaps be good Catholics in time; my business here is to convert
heathens, and who knows but I may convert you too?"--"Very well, father,"
said I, "so you will preach to us all the way?"--"I will not be
troublesome to you," says he; "our religion does not divest us of good
manners; besides, we are here like countrymen; and so we are, compared to
the place we are in; and if you are Huguenots, and I a Catholic, we may
all be Christians at last; at least, we are all gentlemen, and we may
converse so, without being uneasy to one another." I liked this part of
his discourse very well, and it began to put me in mind of my priest that
I had left in the Brazils; but Father Simon did not come up to his
character by a great deal; for though this friar had no appearance of a
criminal levity in him, yet he had not that fund of Christian zeal,
strict piety, and sincere affection to religion that my other good
ecclesiastic had.

But to leave him a little, though he never left us, nor solicited us to
go with him; we had something else before us at first, for we had all
this while our ship and our merchandise