caution in visiting her. He fulfilled his commission with much care, and brought me next day one hundred and twenty francs in gold. The next day I bade farewell to my friends, whose charges were extremely moderate, and at the end of six days reached Ostend.
My intention, as at my first visit to this city, was to go to America or India, but I only met with Danish and Dutch skippers, who refused to take me without credentials. The little cash which I had brought from Lille diminished rapidly, and I was approaching that situation with which we become more or less familiarized, but which is not the less disagreeable on that account. Money certainly does not produce wit, nor talents, nor understanding; but the quiet of mind which it superinduces, the equanimity which it affords, amply supply the place of these qualities; whilst in the absence of this equanimity these gifts are of no avail with many who possess them. The result is, that at the moment when we have most need of all the resources of the invention to procure money, we are derived of these resources by the very want of the money itself. I was assuredly placed in the latter of these conditions, and yet I must dine—an operation frequently more difficult than may be imagined by those happy mortals who think that appetite can be the only thing lacking.
I had heard much of the adventurous and lucrative life of the coasting smugglers, of whom the prisoners had boasted with enthusiasm; for this profession was often followed through inclination, by individuals whose fortune and situation did not compel them to adopt so perilous a life. I confess, for my part, that I was not seduced by the prospect of passing whole nights under cliffs, in the midst of rocks, exposed to all winds, and above all, to the shots of the custom-house officers.
It was with real repugnance that I went to the house of a man named Peters, to whom I was directed,
