r infant I went with at that time with the utmost
detestation, and that this made him unable to send an agreeable answer
to me; for which reason he had sent none at all for some time; but that
in about six or seven months, those resentments wearing off by the
return of his affection to me and his concern in the poor child ----.
There he stopped, and indeed tears stood in his eyes; while in a
parenthesis he only added, and to this minute he did not know whether it
was dead or alive. He then went on: Those resentments wearing off, he
sent me several letters--I think he said seven or eight--but received no
answer; that then his business obliging him to go to Holland, he came to
England, as in his way, but found, as above, that his letters had not
been called for, but that he left them at the house after paying the
postage of them; and going then back to France, he was yet uneasy, and
could not refrain the knight-errantry of coming to England again to seek
me, though he knew neither where or of who to inquire for me, being
disappointed in all his inquiries before; that he had yet taken up his
residence here, firmly believing that one time or other he should meet
me, or hear of me, and that some kind chance would at last throw him in
my way; that he had lived thus above four years, and though his hopes
were vanished, yet he had not any thoughts of removing any more in the
world, unless it should be at last, as it is with other old men, he
might have some inclination to go home to die in his own country, but
that he had not thought of it yet; that if I would consider all these
steps, I would find some reasons to forget his first resentments, and to
think that penance, as he called it, which he had undergone in search of
me an _amende honorable_, in reparation of the affront given to the
kindness of my letter of invitation; and that we might at last make
ourselves some satisfaction on both sides for the mortifications past.

I confess I could not hear all this without being moved very much, and
yet I continued a little stiff and formal too a good while. I told him
that before I could give him any reply to the rest of his discourse I
ought to give him the satisfaction of telling him that his son was
alive, and that indeed, since I saw him so concerned about it, and
mention it with such affection, I was sorry that I had not found out
some way or other to let him know it sooner; but that I thought, after
his slighting the mother,