Judging it quite unsafe to attempt carrying him to Huy, from whence they were now several miles distant, his convoy took him early in the morning to a convent in the neighbourhood, where he was hospitably received, and treated with great kindness and tenderness.  But the cure of his wound was committed to an ignorant barber-surgeon who lived near the house, the best shift that could then be made, at a time when it may easily be supposed persons of ability in their profession had their hands full of employment.  The tent which this artist applied, was almost like a peg driven into the wound; and gentlemen of skill and experience, when they came to hear of the manner in which he was treated, wondered how he could possibly survive such management.  But by the blessing of God on these applications, rough as they were, he recovered in a few months.  The Lady Abbess, who called him her son, treated him with the affection and care of a mother; and he always declared that every thing which he saw within these walls, was conducted with the strictest decency and decorum.  He received a great many devout admonitions from the ladies there, and they would fain have persuaded him to acknowledge what they thought so miraculous a deliverance, by embracing the Catholic faith, as they were pleased to call it.  But they could not succeed; for though no religion lay near his heart, yet he had too much of the spirit of a gentleman lightly to change that form of religion which he wore, as it were loose about him; as well as too much good sense to swallow those monstrous absurdities of Popery which immediately presented themselves to him, unacquainted as he was with the niceties of the controversy.

CHAPTER III.

Military preferments.

When his liberty was regained by an exchange of prisoners, and his health thoroughly established, he was far from rendering unto the Lord according to that wonderful display of divine mercy which he had experienced.  I know very little of the particulars of those wild, thoughtless and wretched years which lay between the 19th and 30th of his life; except that he frequently experienced the divine goodness in renewed instances, particularly in preserving him in several hot military actions, in all which he never received so much as a wound after this, forward as he was in tempting danger; and yet that all these years were spent in an entire alienation from God, and in an eager pursuit of animal pleasure as his supreme good.  The series of criminal amours in which he was almost incessantly engaged during this time, must probably have afforded some remarkable adventures and occurrences; but the memory of them has perished.  Nor do I think it unworthy of notice here, that amidst all the intimacy of our friendship, and the many hours of cheerful as well as serious converse which we spent together, I never remember to have heard him speak of any of these intrigues, otherwise than in the general with deep and solemn abhorrence.  This I the rather mention, as it seemed a most genuine proof of his unfeigned repentance, which I think there is great reason to suspect, when people seem to take a pleasure in relating and describing scenes of vicious indulgence, which they yet profess to have disapproved and forsaken.