David Carnegie Andrew Agnew

“ On this subject I earnestly implored divine assistance to aid me, entreating that he would be pleased to accord me strength and courage to do nothing unworthy of the profession of a reformed Christian, of which I had the honour to experience the light. ”

“ In fact you know that two years ago her accouchement took place in the prison of Sedan, she having been dragged from her bed (which from illness she had not left for six months) to be brought there. By the goodness of God she now, at the end of three weeks, notwithstanding all these miseries and calamities, brought into the world another fine boy, by whom the number of your brothers is again augmented. ”

“ But persons, who presented themselves for the purpose of annoying me, had all license for doing so, and of such people there were only too many to be found. Even your poor mother saw me but rarely and with the greatest difficulty, which obliged her, though very inconvenient from the approach of her accouchement, to make a journey to Soissons in order to try and obtain from our Intendant the favour that she should be allowed to take care of me in my illness, and that some kind of liberty should be afforded to me. ”

“ They then sent us from Brest to Dinan, which is forty leagues distant; we performed most of the journey on foot, every league is three long miles. We were five days and a half on the journey, and David and I have walked twenty-one miles in a day. Had it not been for some gentlemen that were with us, we should never have been able to make the journey; for our officer was not with us, and did not know we were gone until after our departure. ”

“ Your loving brother till death,
“Louis Fontaine.”⁠ Sir Erasmus Borrowes (in the Ulster Journal, vol. iii. p. 226) mentions Mrs Willis of Portarlington, the refugee’s great-granddaughter, then in possession of the family heirlooms, such as the picture of the Chateau, a wooden token representing the profile of Louis XIV., and the manuscript written in Guize prison and already described. I had permission to copy the French original (but time did not permit) ”