an important packet of papers belonging to his despatches
was missing. He had in the moment of danger and
terror stuffed all his despatches into his great-coat
pocket; in getting out of the boat he had given his
coat to Comtois to carry, and, strange to tell, this
charge d’affaires had taken it upon trust, from
the assertion of his valet, that all his papers were
safe. He once, indeed, had looked them over,
but so carelessly that he never had missed the packet.
His dismay was great when he discovered his loss.
He repeated at least a thousand times that he was
an undone man, unless the packet could be found.—Search
was made for it, in the boat, on the shore, in every
probable and improbable place—but all in
vain; and in the midst of the search a messenger came
to announce that the wind was fair, that the ship
would sail in one hour, and that the captain could
wait for no man. M. de Tourville was obliged to
take his departure without this precious packet.
Mrs. Percy was the only person in the family who had
the humanity to pity him. He was too little of
a soldier for Godfrey’s taste, too much of a
courtier for Mr. Percy, too frivolous for Caroline,
and too little romantic for Rosamond.
“So,” said Rosamond, “here was a
fine beginning of a romance with a shipwreck, that
ends only in five square merchants, who do not lose
even a guilder of their property, and a diplomatist,
with whom we are sure of nothing but that he has lost
a bundle of papers for which nobody cares!”
In a few days the remembrance of the whole adventure
began to fade from her fancy. M. de Tourville,
and his snuff-box, and his essences, and his flattery,
and his diplomacy, and his lost packet, and all the
circumstances of the shipwreck, would have appeared
as a dream, if they had not been maintained in the
rank of realities by the daily sight of the wreck,
and by the actual presence of the Dutch sailors, who
were repairing the vessel.
A few days after the departure of M. de Tourville,
Commissioner Falconer, a friend, or at least a relation
of Mr. Percy’s, came to pay him a visit.
As the commissioner looked out of the window and observed
the Dutch carpenter, who was passing by with tools
under his arm, he began to talk of the late shipwreck.
Mr. Falconer said he had heard much of the successful
exertions and hospitality of the Percy family on that
occasion—regretted that he had himself
been called to town just at that time—asked
many questions about the passengers on board the vessel,
and when M. de Tourville was described to him, deplored
that Mr. Percy had never thought of trying to detain
this foreigner a few days longer.
For, argued the commissioner, though M. de Tourville
might not be an accredited charge d’affaires,
yet, since he was a person in some degree in an official
capacity, and intrusted with secret negotiations, government
might have wished to know something about him.
“And at all events,” added the commissioner,
with a shrewd smile, “it would have been a fine
way of paying our court to a certain great man.”
