that I determined to give up my employment and return to her. I preferred the coarsest food with her for my companion to the continual feasts of which I partook at Sir Halsewell's.
Poverty stared us in the face, and exertion of some kind was absolutely necessary. We tried to keep a small shop in Bridgewater, but our efforts were not crowned with success.
You may be surprised that in my difficulties I received no assistance from the fund, collected for distribution among the suffering French Refugees, so I will tell you how it happened. I must begin the story at a period dating about the time of my arrival in England. As soon as my friends in London heard of my being in the country, they brought my case, unknown to me, before the committee for dispensing the fund. Mr. Maureau, my advocate at Saintes, drew such a picture of my zeal and constancy that there was no opposition made to placing my name on the list of ministers, although I was only a candidate, and I was to receive £30 per annum. The first I knew of what was done was by the receipt of a letter from Mr. Maureau, congratulating me on my escape, and enclosing to me the sum of £7 10s. as the first quarter of a pension that the committee had granted me. He further requested me to send him a certificate of my having received the Communion according to the rites of the Church of England, which it would be necessary to produce to the committee before I could receive the second quarter.
I, who had but just escaped from the Tempter, felt alarmed at this mode of entitling myself to receive charity. Before this communication reached me I had communed most cordially with the English, after the manner of the Established Church, without the least scruple of conscience, but when it became the condition upon which I was to receive the chari-
