CONCLUSION.
I have been at considerable pains to ascertain the present condition of the descendants of the sons and daughter of James Fontaine, who settled in Virginia; and the result of my inquiry is, that, in regard to temporal circumstances, they are chiefly in the condition so touchingly prayed for by Agur, when he says:—"Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me: lest I be full and deny thee, and say, Who is the Lord? or lest I be poor and steal, and take the name of my God in vain." I find scarcely any of the family who are not earning a comfortable subsistence for themselves and those who depend upon them, and at the same time there are very few who can be called actually wealthy.
I am the more disposed to dwell upon this fact, from observing the very different condition of the descendants of another Huguenot refugee, who, like our ancestor, left a written memoir for the use of his children. From this record I learn that he had been a notary, and had been deprived of his employment on account of his being of the Reformed religion. He was a husband and a father. During the persecution which preceded the actual revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the dragoons visited his house, and behaved with their usual brutality and insolence. They sent him away soon after their arrival, to procure for them, from the neighbouring village, some delicacies with which to pamper their appetites. While on the road, he was intimidated by hearing of the cruelty with which the dragoons had said they would treat him on his return home; and his informant, a kind neighbor, persuaded him to conceal himself in his house.
I think, that, whatever might have been his anticipations of suffering, it was most unmanly to desert his wife, and leave her alone with the dragoons, particularly from her state at the time, being in bed with an infant only three days old. As might have been expected, the dragoons vented all their malice upon the poor woman. When they found that her husband did not return, they dragged her out of bed, and threatened to roast her alive: they took it in turns to hold her close to a fire, which was so hot that each one could only bear to hold her for a short time. Death must soon have followed if she had not been rescued by the timely intervention of the village Curé, who accidentally heard what was going on, and persuaded them to desist, promising that he would make her recant. This was in the year 1681.
He went through various trials and vicissitudes during the four years following. His wife died, and her young infant also, and he was hunted from place to place; and at last in 1685, the memorable year of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, he proceeded to Rochelle, for the purpose of embarking for England. He was arrested and imprisoned there, and after much threatening, insult and abuse, he was induced to sign an act of abjuration. He was liberated immediately, but was more miserable than ever, full of remorse for the act he had committed when under the influence of fear. He still hoped to escape from France, but it was more difficult to accomplish now that he had publicly abjured the Protestant faith. In the course of two or three years, however, he succeeded in getting away, but he left behind him a daughter eighteen years of age, for the sole purpose of trying to collect, and turn into money, their few scattered resources, to bring after him to England. She was able to accomplish this end, and to join him in about a year; which I think was more than he had a right to expect: but we shall see that his family were not much enriched eventually.
Observe; the memoir he wrote for his children has been preserved and published: but how? His descendants could not read the manuscript, for it was in the French language, and they, like ourselves, had become blended with another nation. English was with them, as with us, the mother tongue, and they could read no other, for they were uneducated. The manuscript might have lain till now upon the shelf of a miserable lodging-house in the heart of London, had it not been brought to light by accident. The owners of it were in poverty, and applied for relief to a benevolent Society, and one of the visitors, upon his charitable errand to them, became acquainted with the existence of the manuscript. He took it home to peruse, and undertook to have it translated and printed, to be sold for the benefit of the writer's descendants.
Now we come to the practical lesson which I draw from contrasting the different condition of the descendants of these two Huguenot refugees, and I desire to impress it upon our minds, with the view of inducing us to aim at obtaining the strong faith of our ancestor.
He believed that God would take care of him and his, if he trusted in him; he knew his promise, and that if he left-house or parents, or brethren, or wife or children, for the kingdom of God's sake, he should receive manifold more in this present time, and in the world to come life everlasting. He therefore left all his worldly substance behind him, and fled to a land where he could worship God according to the dictates of his conscience. He waited not to sell houses and lands, and collect money for his support in a foreign country. He firmly believed the promises of God, he saw distinctly the path pointed out by duty to Him, he hesitated not, but followed on.
We know that he experienced many privations and hardships, but in the end he was able to maintain his family, and to give good educations to his children. His descendants have generally been able to do the same.
His manuscript record of his interesting and instructive life, instead of being a dead letter to his descendants like the one named above, has been perused and valued by each successive generation, as it has been handed down from father to son, as a precious and sacred inheritance.
In the other narrative we cannot but observe weakness of faith throughout. In his unmanly desertion of his wife, we first notice it, then in his signing the act of abjuration, and lastly in leaving his daughter in France to collect money for the support of the family.
My own mind is forcibly impressed with the conviction that we have reason to hope for the especial blessing which God has promised to the seed of the righteous. May we all strive to obtain the faith of our forefathers, and so to walk as not to prove degenerate scions from a worthy stock.