“In the hurry of the moment I scarce knew what I did. I bade the housekeeper¹ put up every delicacy² she had, in order to tempt³ the invalid⁴, whom yet I hoped to bring back with me to our house. When the carriage was ready, I took the good woman with me to show us the exact way, which my coachman professed⁵ not to know; for, indeed, they were staying at but a poor kind of place at the back of Leicester Square, of which they had heard, as Clément told me afterwards, from one of the fishermen who had carried them across from the Dutch coast in their disguises as a Friesland peasant and his mother. They had some jewels of value concealed⁷ round their persons; but their ready money was all spent before I saw them, and Clément had been unwilling⁸ to leave his mother, even for the time necessary to ascertain⁹ the best mode of disposing of the diamonds. For, overcome with distress¹⁰ of mind and bodily fatigue¹¹, she had reached{105} London only to take to her bed in a sort of low, nervous fever, in which her chief and only idea seemed to be, that Clément was about to be taken from her to some prison or other; and if he were out of her sight, though but for a minute, she cried like a child, and could not be pacified¹² or comforted. The landlady¹³ was a kind, good woman, and though she but half understood the case, she was truly sorry for them, as foreigners, and the mother sick in a strange land.

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