n that he proposed to make the portion of
liberty, thus granted as a favour, subservient to evading the expected
order from France, should such a measure be then desirable. At length the
order arrived, and three years and a half of detention had not produced
any very sensible effect on his prisoner; the execution of it was
therefore suspended, until another reference should be made to the
government and an answer returned. What was the subject of this reference
could not be known, but there existed in the island only one conjecture;
that from having had such a degree of liberty during near two years, I
had acquired a knowledge of the colony which made it unsafe to permit my
departure.

Extensive wars were at this time carrying on in Europe, the French arms
were victorious, and general De Caen saw his former companions becoming
counts, dukes, and marshals of the empire, whilst he remained an untitled
general of division; he and his officers, as one of them told me, then
felt themselves little better circumstanced than myself--than prisoners
in an almost forgotten speck of the globe, with their promotion
suspended. Rumours of a premeditated attack at length reached the island,
which it was said the captain-general heard with pleasure; and it was
attributed to the prospect of making military levies on the inhabitants,
and increasing his authority by the proclamation of martial law; but if I
mistake not, the general's pleasure arose from more extended views and a
more permanent source. If the island were attacked and he could repulse
the English forces, distinction would follow; if unsuccessful, a
capitulation would restore him to France and the career of advancement.
An attack was therefore desirable; and as the captain-general probably
imagined that an officer who had been six years a prisoner, and whose
liberty had been so often requested by the different authorities in
India, would not only be anxious to forward it with all his might, but
that his representations would be attended to, the pretexts before
alleged for my imprisonment and the answer from France were waved; and
after passing six weeks in the town of Port Louis and five on board a
ship in the harbour, from which I had before been debarred, he suffered
me to depart in a cartel bound to the place where the attack was publicly
said to be in meditation. This is the sole motive which, upon a review of
the general's conduct, I can assign for being set at liberty so