Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress. Даниэль Дефо

      Chapter 1

      Table of Contents

      I was born, as my friends told me, at the city of Poitiers, in the province or county of Poitou in France, from whence I was brought to England by my parents, who fled for their religion about the year 1683, when the Protestants were banished from France by the cruelty of their persecutors.

      I, who knew little or nothing of what I was brought over hither for, was well enough pleased with being here. London, a large and gay city, took with me mighty well, who from my being a child loved a crowd and to see a great many fine folks.

      I retained nothing of France but the language. My father and mother, being people of better fashion than ordinarily the people called refugees at that time were, and having fled early while it was easy to secure their effects, had, before their coming over, remitted considerable sums of money, or, as I remember, a considerable value in French brandy, paper, and other goods; and these selling very much to advantage here, my father was in very good circumstances at his coming over, so that he was far from applying to the rest of our nation that were here for countenance and relief. On the contrary, he had his door continually thronged with miserable objects of the poor starving creatures, who at that time fled hither for shelter on account of conscience or something else.

      I have indeed heard my father say that he was pestered with a great many of those who for any religion they had might e'en have stayed where they were, but who flocked over hither in droves for what they call in English a livelihood; hearing with what open arms the refugees were received in England, and how they fell readily into business, being by the charitable assistance of the people in London encouraged to work in their manufactures, in Spitalfields, Canterbury, and other places, and that they had a much better price for their work than in France and the like.

      My father, I say, told me that he was more pestered with the clamours of these people than of those who were truly refugees and fled in distress merely for conscience.

      I was about ten years old when I was brought over hither, where, as I have said, my father lived in very good circumstances and died in about eleven years more; in which time, as I had accomplished myself for the sociable part of the world, so I had acquainted myself with some of our English

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