Having introduced his wife to old friends in Paris, and paid a visit with her to his relations at Joigny, the General settled his family in a small house at Passy. Instead of being seen at Chelsea again within eighteen months, as her father had been led to expect, she was detained in France more than ten years. From the moment when Lord Whitworth quitted Paris in May, 1803, her opportunities of communicating with England were few and far between. All remittances thence, including her annuity, ended with the peace. The claims to property on which her husband had built proved delusive. Apparently they would have been without means of any kind, but that, just as war was declared, the influence of General Lauriston procured for his old comrade the _retraite_, or retiring allowance, for which the latter had been petitioning. Yet this only amounted to £62 10s. yearly, so that the luckless pair would have been far better off in their cottage at West Humble. Moreover, the receipt of half-pay made it impossible for them to risk any attempt at escape while the war continued. At length, in 1805, M. d’Arblay obtained employment in the Civil Department of the Office of Public Buildings. He became, in fact, a Government clerk, plodding daily between his desk and a poorly-furnished home at suburban Passy. He seems to have been eventually promoted to the rank of _sous-chef_ in his department. We learn, however, from the scanty notices belonging to this period, that the Chevalier was treated with consideration by the heads of his office, and that he and Madame kept their footing in Parisian society. ‘The society in which I mix,’ writes the lady, ‘when I can prevail with myself to quit my yet dearer fireside, is all that can be wished, whether for wit, wisdom, intelligence, gaiety, or politeness.’ She would resume, she adds, her old descriptions if she could only write more frequently, or with more security that she was not writing to the winds and the waves. Her worst distress was the rarity with which letters could be despatched, or travel either way, with anything like safety. At another time she tells her father: ‘I have never heard whether the last six letters I have written have as yet been received. Two of them were antiques that had waited three or four years some opportunity ... the two last were to reach you through a voyage by America.’ The very letter in which this is said lost its chance of being sent, and was not finished till a year later. Dr. Burney, in his fear of a miscarriage, finally gave up writing, and charged his family and friends to follow his example. Fanny had nothing to regret in her husband, except his being overworked and in poor health: her heart shrank from leaving him; yet her longing for England increased from year to year. Her visionary castles, she said, were not in the air, but on the sea.