certain that the merchant was privy to it. The merchant bade him
defiance. However, he gave him a great deal of trouble and put him to a
great charge, and had like to have brought him in for a party to my
escape; in which case he would have been obliged to have produced me,
and that in the penalty of some capital sum of money.

But the merchant was too many for him another way, for he brought an
information against him for a cheat; wherein laying down the whole fact,
how he intended falsely to accuse the widow of the jeweller for the
supposed murder of her husband; that he did it purely to get the jewels
from her; and that he offered to bring him (the merchant) in, to be
confederate with him, and to share the jewels between them; proving also
his design to get the jewels into his hands, and then to have dropped
the prosecution upon condition of my quitting the jewels to him. Upon
this charge he got him laid by the heels; so he was sent to the
Conciergerie--that is to say, to Bridewell--and the merchant cleared. He
got out of jail in a little while, though not without the help of money,
and continued teasing the merchant a long while, and at last threatening
to assassinate and murder him. So the merchant, who, having buried his
wife about two months before, was now a single man, and not knowing what
such a villain might do, thought fit to quit Paris, and came away to
Holland also.

It is most certain that, speaking of originals, I was the source and
spring of all that trouble and vexation to this honest gentleman; and as
it was afterwards in my power to have made him full satisfaction, and
did not, I cannot say but I added ingratitude to all the rest of my
follies; but of that I shall give a fuller account presently.

I was surprised one morning, when, being at the merchant's house who he
had recommended me to in Rotterdam, and being busy in his
counting-house, managing my bills, and preparing to write a letter to
him to Paris, I heard a noise of horses at the door, which is not very
common in a city where everybody passes by water; but he had, it seems,
ferried over the Maas from Willemstadt, and so came to the very door,
and I, looking towards the door upon hearing the horses, saw a gentleman
alight and come in at the gate. I knew nothing, and expected nothing,
to be sure, of the person; but, as I say, was surprised, and indeed more
than ordinarily surprised, when, coming nearer to me, I saw it was my
merchant of P