LAHONTAN. 325 



quality about coiirt could not influence M. de Pontchartain, whose 

 prepossession agaiast me is invincible. I left Paris with a melan- 

 choly mind and went to solace myself for some months in a certain 

 province of the kingdom which you will easily guess." He gives a 

 hint to his old patron that he is in want of money. " The country I 

 am now in is a very good country," he says, " but I do not find 

 money stirring amongst us, which, by my troth, I do not like, for 

 among the Europeans one cannot live without money as they do 

 among the Hurons of Canada. I always think of that country 

 with regret," he says, " when my pocket is at low-water mark and 

 my mind disquieted with care and anxiety, in contriving how to fill 

 it with a precious metal that gives life and spirit to the poorest sort 

 of men and inspires them with good qualities." The following letter 

 is dated at Huescon, July 11, 1695. It contaias "an account of the 

 author's wonderful escape ; he being taken for a Huguenot and 

 examined by the ignorant cur^s." While at Erleich he receives a 

 letter from " a certain person " at Versailles, the tenor of which 

 made it advisable for him to cross the lines into Spain as speedily as 

 possible. " I had no sooner read my letter," he says, " than I 

 marched straight to my lodging to contrive within myself some way 

 to get safe out of the kingdom. You may be sure my council was 

 soon assembled, for such a headpiece as mine does not use to spend 

 much time in consultations. I determined," he says, " to delude my 

 landlord by desiring him to give me an account in writing of the 

 road to Agen where I pretended to have some business. The best of 

 the matter is I have already got out of my farmers nearly 200 

 pistoles and a fine horse, which I was obliged to for my lucky 

 deliverance. I got up by the break of day and desired a guide to 

 conduct me out of one of the gates of the city that leads a quite 

 different way from that I had in my eye." At Laruns, the last 

 village of Beam, he is suspected to be a Huguenot escaping out of 

 the country, but he contrives to satisfy the local cure before whom 

 he is interrogated. By the aid of a guide mounted on a mule he 

 crosses the Pyrenees and the day after leaving Laruns he is at 

 Salient in Spain. The final letter of Lahontan's book is written at 

 Saragossa, October 8, 1695. It is taken wp with "a description of 

 Saragossa, a view of the government of Arragon, and an account of 

 the customs of the people." It contains nothing illustrative of the 

 personal history of Lahontan. 



