Now we came to Surat, my friend and I, having dismissed our Morattys at a convenient distance outside the city, with thanks and a genteel present, and were received with great amazement by the gentlemen at the Factory, and this amazement was not diminished when our story was told. My good friend Mr Martin, hearing it narrated by the viscount, was fit to embrace us both in his joy and happiness, and made his comment thereon in many strange proverbs, culled from divers tongues. I delivered the message I brought to his honour the President, and as ’twas now manifestly impossible for me to return into the Mogul’s immediate dominions (though here out of danger, as being supposed to have fallen in the sack of Tashpour), another gentleman was sent to convey the answer on’t to Mr Kidder at Agra, and I was given his place in the Factory for the time. The viscount also did his best to repay our Factory for their entertainment of him by instructing divers of the Company’s servants there in the Moratty tongue, I being one of these; but so great was the prejudice wherewith the reported deeds and purposes of the French Factory had invested all their nation in our eyes (the said French Factory being at once so crowded with merchants and so poor that they were thankful to leave the viscount to us for hospitality), that I could not be sorry for my friend’s sake when a means offered for his return to France. This was a ship of Havre-de-Grace, coming from Phoolcherry and returning home, whose master offered a passage to the viscount, and he departed in her, bidding me farewell with much sorrow, the which I also did experience for his leaving me. But although he did promise to write me concerning all his affairs, so little commerce[132] was there betwixt us and the French that near three years passed before I heard from him, and then I learned that he had found on his arrival in France my lord marquis dead, and this, as they said, rather of a broken heart upon some disgrace he was fallen into with the court, such as had made him be recalled and kept him idle, than of any more exact disease. Madam Heliodora the viscount found dwelling in Paris with a lady of quality that was some kin to her, and they were wedded almost immediately upon his return, departing thereafter to his estate, which was situate on the borders of the provinces of Languedoc and Gascoign,[133] and _where_ (_says he_), _we shall endeavour, with God’s blessing, to spend our lives in alleviating the miseries and amending the situation of such as depend upon us_. And this letter my friend did close with so many and such lofty expressions of the gratitude that both he and his lady experienced towards me, that I can’t quote from ’em; yet I won’t deny but they were very pleasant to me, and that I loved to flatter myself with the belief that these two persons, whom I did so greatly esteem, thanked me for some of the happiness I now contemplated in them by means of this letter. And with