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.
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