wealth, he returned with a splended assortment of diamonds to France, having been engaged upwards of forty years in travelling. Disposing of these jewels advantageously to the French king, who granted him a patent of nobility, he now conceived that all his wanderings were at an end, and began to think of enjoying the wealth he had purchased with so much time and toil and difficulty. Experience, however, had not rendered him wise. Puffed up with the vanity inspired by his patent of nobility, his whole soul was now wrapped up in visions of luxury and magnificence. He rented a splendid house, set up a carriage, and hired a number of valets. The nobility, who no doubt devoured his adventures and his dinners with equal greediness, flocked about him, invited, caressed, flattered, and ruined him.
Live like yourself was now my lady's word!
He was prevailed upon by some of his noble friends, who supposed him to be possessed of the wealth of Crœsus, to purchase a baronial castle and estate near Lyons, the repairs of which, united with the absurd expenses of his household, quickly threatened to plunge him into the poverty and obscurity from which he originally rose. To accelerate this unhappy catastrophe, undoubtedly owing principally to his own folly, his nephew, to whose management he had intrusted a valuable venture in the hope of retrieving his shattered fortune, proved dishonest, married, and remained in the East, appropriating to his own use the property of his uncle. To increase the consternation caused in his family by these private calamities, it was rumoured that the edict of Nantes was about to be revoked, which induced him immediately to dispose of his estate, and prepare to emigrate with the great body of the Protestants out of France. Time for proper negotiations not being allowed, the barony was sold for considerably less than it had cost him; and every thing
