happy, will leave me here to continue to be so? Permitting me to live in
the island is but a trifling favor. I could wish to be condemned to do
it, and constrained to remain here that I may not be obliged to go
elsewhere." I cast an envious eye upon Micheli du Cret, who, quiet in
the castle of Arbourg, had only to determine to be happy to become so.
In fine, by abandoning myself to these reflections, and the alarming
apprehensions of new storms always ready to break over my head, I wished
for them with an incredible ardor, and that instead of suffering me to
reside in the island, the Bernois would give it me for a perpetual
prison; and I can assert that had it depended upon me to get myself
condemned to this, I would most joyfully have done it, preferring a
thousand times the necessity of passing my life there to the danger of
being driven to another place.

This fear did not long remain on my mind. When I least expected what was
to happen, I received a letter from the bailiff of Nidau, within whose
jurisdiction the island of St. Peter was; by his letter he announced to
me from their excellencies an order to quit the island and their states.
I thought myself in a dream. Nothing could be less natural, reasonable,
or foreseen than such an order: for I considered my apprehensions as the
result of inquietude in a man whose imagination was disturbed by his
misfortunes, and not to proceed from a foresight which could have the
least foundation. The measures I had taken to insure myself the tacit
consent of the sovereign, the tranquillity with which I had been left to
make my establishment, the visits of several people from Berne, and that
of the bailiff himself, who had shown me such friendship and attention,
and the rigor of the season in which it was barbarous to expel a man who
was sickly and infirm, all these circumstances made me and many people
believe that there was some mistake in the order and that ill-disposed
people had purposely chosen the time of the vintage and the vacation of
the senate suddenly to do me an injury.

Had I yielded to the first impulse of my indignation, I should
immediately have departed. But to what place was I to go? What was to
become of me at the beginning of the winter, without object, preparation,
guide or carriage? Not to leave my papers and effects at the mercy of
the first comer, time was necessary to make proper arrangements, and it
was not stated in the order whether or not t