h a
trifle. But such is my unfortunate situation that even this trifle
is of some importance to me. Driven from my country, and obliged to
take refuge in this island, where everything is exceedingly
expensive, the little sum I have mentioned, which was formerly a
matter of indifference, would now be of great service to me.

You will understand, General, that at the age of eighty-six, after
serving served my country well for sixty years, without the least
interruption, not counting the time of emigration, chased from every
place, I have been obliged to take refuge here, to subsist on the
scanty succour given by the English Government to the French
emigrant. I say emigrant because I have been forced to be one.
I had no intention of being one, but a horde of brigands, who came
from Caen to my house to assassinate me, considered I had committed
the great crime in being the senior general of the canton and in
having the Grand Cross of St. Louis: this was too much for them; if
it had not been for the cries of my neighbours, my door would have
been broken open, and I should have been assassinated; and I had but
time to fly by a door at the back, only carrying away what I had on
me. At first I retired to Paris, but there they told me that I
could do nothing but go into a foreign country, so great was the
hate entertained for me by my fellow-citizens, although I lived in
retirement, never having any discussion with any one. Thus,
General; I have abandoned all I possessed, money and goods, leaving
them at the mercy of what they call the nation, which has profited a
good deal by this, as I have nothing left in the world, not even a
spot to put my foot on. If even a horse had been reserved for me,
General, I could ask for what depends on you, for I have heard it
said that some emigrants have been allowed to return home. I do not
even ask this favour, not having a place to rest my foot. And,
besides, I have with me here an exiled brother, older than I am,
very ill and in perfect second childhood, whom I could not abandon.
I am resigned to my own unhappy fate, but my sole and great grief is
that not only I myself have been ill-treated, but that my fate has,
contrary to the law, injured relations whom I love and respect. I
have a mother-in-law, eighty years old, who has been refused the
dower I had given her from my property, an