s dropped the discourse, then pretended it was too late, and
that he could not get it, and then descended to ask poor Amy to lend him
five hundred pistoles.

Amy pretended poverty, that her circumstances were but mean, and that
she could not raise such a sum; and this she did to try him to the
utmost. He descended to three hundred, then to one hundred, then to
fifty, and then to a pistole, which she lent him, and he, never
intending to pay it, played out of her sight as much as he could. And
thus being satisfied that he was the same worthless thing he had ever
been, I threw off all thoughts of him; whereas, had he been a man of any
sense and of any principle of honour, I had it in my thoughts to retire
to England again, send for him over, and have lived honestly with him.
But as a fool is the worst of husbands to do a woman good, so a fool is
the worst husband a woman can do good to. I would willingly have done
him good, but he was not qualified to receive it or make the best use of
it. Had I sent him ten thousand crowns instead of eight thousand livres,
and sent it with express condition that he should immediately have
bought himself the commission he talked of with part of the money, and
have sent some of it to relieve the necessities of his poor miserable
wife at London, and to prevent his children to be kept by the parish, it
was evident he would have been still but a private trooper, and his wife
and children should still have starved at London, or been kept of mere
charity, as, for aught he knew, they then were.

Seeing, therefore, no remedy, I was obliged to withdraw my hand from
him, that had been my first destroyer, and reserve the assistance that I
intended to have given him for another more desirable opportunity. All
that I had now to do was to keep myself out of his sight, which was not
very difficult for me to do, considering in what station he lived.

Amy and I had several consultations then upon the main question,
namely, how to be sure never to chop upon him again by chance, and to be
surprised into a discovery, which would have been a fatal discovery
indeed. Amy proposed that we should always take care to know where the
_gens d'armes_ were quartered, and thereby effectually avoid them; and
this was one way.

But this was not so as to be fully to my satisfaction; no ordinary way
of inquiring where the _gens d'armes_ were quartered was sufficient to
me; but I found out a fellow who was completely quali