Daniel Defoe

“ Though I hung back with an awkwardness that was really unfeigned, yet when she so readily left me, I thought it was not so kind, and I began to think she should have pressed me still on to it; so foolishly backward are we to the thing which of all the world we most desire, mocking ourselves with a feigned reluctance when the negative would be death to us. ”

“ It was one afternoon about four o’clock, my friendly Quaker and I sitting in her chamber upstairs, and very cheerful, chatting together (for she was the best company in the world) , when somebody ringing hastily at the door, and no servant just then in the way, she ran down herself to the door; when a gentleman appears with a footman attending, and making some apologies which she did not thoroughly understand, he speaking but broken English. ”

“ He answered me that he should have been very glad if I had been so good but to have given him the satisfaction of knowing the poor unfortunate creature was yet alive, and he would have taken some care of it upon himself, and particularly by owning it for a legitimate child, which, where nobody had known to the contrary, would have taken off the infamy which would otherwise cleave to it, and so the child should not itself have known anything of its own disaster ”

“ It was not till the fifth Saturday that her man came, I with a great deal of joy, and gave her an account that he had found out the gentleman; that he was a Dutchman, but a French merchant; that he came from Rouen, and his name was ——, and that he lodged at Mr. —— on Laurence Pountney Hill. I was surprised, you may be sure, when she came and told me one evening all the particulars, except that of having set her man to watch. “I have found out thy Dutch friend,” says she, “and can tell thee how to find him too.” ”

“ The fellow followed diligently to the gate of an inn in Bishopsgate Street, and seeing him go in, made no doubt but that he had him fast, but was confounded when upon enquiry he found the inn was a thoroughfare into another street, and that the two gentlemen had only rode through the inn as the way to the street where they were going, and so, in short, came back no wiser than he went. ”

“ We had several meetings after this, in which still we had so many preliminaries to go through, that we scarce ever bordered upon the main subject; once indeed he said something of it, and I put it off with a kind of a jest. “Alas!” says I, “those things are out of the question now; ’tis almost two ages since those things were talked between us,” says I; “you see I am grown an old woman since that.” Another time he gave a little push at it again, and I laughed again. “Why, what dost thou talk of?” said I in a formal way, “dost thou not see I am turned Quaker? ”

“ I say with much difficulty, she came to be informed that my merchant had lived there two years or something more; but that having met with a very great misfortune, he had gone back to Holland, as the French merchant said, where he had stayed two years; but with this addition, viz. that he came back again to Rouen and lived in good reputation there another year, and afterwards he was gone to England, and that he lived in London. But Amy could by no means learn how to write to him there, till by great accident an old Dutch skipper who had formerly served him, coming to Rouen, Amy was told of it ”

“ Amy had a very good passage over the sea, and I had a letter from her from Calais in three days after she went from London. When she came to Paris she wrote me an account, that as to her first and most important enquiry, which was after the Dutch merchant; her account was that he had returned to Paris, lived three years there and, quitting that city, went to live at Rouen. So away goes Amy for Rouen. ”

“ This, Amy thought, it was time enough to tell me of when she came over, and besides, she did not find this Dutch skipper till she had spent four or five months, and been again at Paris and then come back to Rouen for further information. But in the meantime she wrote me from Paris, that he was not to be found by any means, that he had been gone from Paris seven or eight years, that she was told he had lived at Rouen and she was a-going thither to enquire, but that she had heard afterwards that he was gone also from thence to Holland, so she did not go. ”

“ He then went on, those resentments wearing off; he sent me several letters, I think he said seven or eight, but received no answer; that then his business obliging him to go to Holland, he came to England, as in his way, but found as above that his letters had not been called for, but that he left them at the house after paying the postage of them, and then going back to France, he was yet uneasy and could not refrain the knight-errantry of coming to England again to seek me, though he knew neither where or of whom to enquire for me, being disappointed in all his enquiries before. ”

“ She took the hint immediately, and her servant being behind the coach, she called him to the coach side and bade him keep his eye upon that gentleman, and as soon as the coach came to the end of Whitechapel he should get down and follow him closely, so as to see where he put up his horse, and then to go into the inn and enquire, if he could, who he was and where he lived. ”

“ In these thoughts I passed away near three months, till at last (being impatient) I resolved to send for Amy to come over and tell her how things stood, and that I would do nothing till she came. Amy in answer sent me word she would come away with all speed, but begged of me that I would enter into no engagement with him or anybody till she arrived ”

“ I confess I could not hear all this without being moved very much, and yet I continued a little stiff and formal too a good while. I told him that before I could give him any reply to the rest of his discourse, I ought to give him the satisfaction of telling him that his son was alive ”