If Hume was thus courted by his companions, and urged by Brydone to the
dangerous enterprise in which the king, by the wiles and flattery of the
French queen, had engaged, he was treated in a very different manner by
Margaret, his wife,--a fine young woman, who, fond to distraction of her
husband, was desirous of preventing him from risking his life in a cause
which she feared, with prophetic feeling, would bring desolation on her
country. Every effort which love and female cajolery could suggest was
used by this dutiful wife to keep her husband at home. She hung round
his neck,--held up to his face a fine child five months old, whose mute
eloquence softened the heart, but could not alter the purpose of the
father,--wept, prayed, implored. She asked him the startling
question--Who, when he was dead--and die he might--would shield her from
injury and misfortune, and cherish, with the tenderness and love which
its beauty and innocence deserved, the interesting pledge of their
affection? She painted in glowing colours--which the imagination,
excited by love, can so well supply--the situation of her as a widow and
her child as an orphan.
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