In later life (alas!) the Hymn has been succeeded by sad and bitter meditations; and the sweet sleep has been but ill exchanged for the broken slumbers which haunt the uneasy pillow of care.  On the other hand, I have continued to fold my clothes, and to keep my little diary.  The former habit links me to my happy childhood—­before papa was ruined.  The latter habit—­hitherto mainly useful in helping me to discipline the fallen nature which we all inherit from Adam—­has unexpectedly proved important to my humble interests in quite another way.  It has enabled poor Me to serve the caprice of a wealthy member of the family into which my late uncle married.  I am fortunate enough to be useful to Mr. Franklin Blake.

I have been cut off from all news of my relatives by marriage for some time past.  When we are isolated and poor, we are not infrequently forgotten.  I am now living, for economy’s sake, in a little town in Brittany, inhabited by a select circle of serious English friends, and possessed of the inestimable advantages of a Protestant clergyman and a cheap market.

In this retirement—­a Patmos amid the howling ocean of popery that surrounds us—­a letter from England has reached me at last.  I find my insignificant existence suddenly remembered by Mr. Franklin Blake.  My wealthy relative—­would that I could add my spiritually-wealthy relative!—­writes, without even an attempt at disguising that he wants something of me.  The whim has seized him to stir up the deplorable scandal of the Moonstone:  and I am to help him by writing the account of what I myself witnessed while visiting at Aunt Verinder’s house in London.  Pecuniary remuneration is offered to me—­with the want of feeling peculiar to the rich.  I am to re-open wounds that Time has barely closed; I am to recall the most intensely painful remembrances—­and this done, I am to feel myself compensated by a new laceration, in the shape of Mr. Blake’s cheque.  My nature is weak.  It cost me a hard struggle, before Christian humility conquered sinful pride, and self-denial accepted the cheque.

Without my diary, I doubt—­pray let me express it in the grossest terms!—­if I could have honestly earned my money.  With my diary, the poor labourer (who forgives Mr. Blake for insulting her) is worthy of her hire.  Nothing escaped me at the time I was visiting dear Aunt Verinder.  Everything was entered (thanks to my early training) day by day as it happened; and everything down to the smallest particular, shall be told here.  My sacred regard for truth is (thank God) far above my respect for persons.  It will be easy for Mr. Blake to suppress what may not prove to be sufficiently flattering in these pages to the person chiefly concerned in them.  He has purchased my time, but not even his wealth can purchase my conscience too.*