FLORIAN - The Most Traveled Man on Earth

Letter 10.
.
[Undated letter from Peter (Pierre Renee Le Det de Segrais) apparently in Paris, France,
writing to his sister, Marguerite Marie Le Det de Segrais, apparently in New Orleans,
Louisiana.]
[Early 1810? Letter] 84
[Upside down at the top of the letter]
I thank you, dear sister, for having taken the time to write me, although you have not
received my letters. I am delighted to hear the news from you, for you must never doubt
my tender affection. I wish you to be happy and wish that we were all re-united. That
can perhaps come about one day, but it is not yet about to happen—at least I do not
foresee it for myself. Tell me a little about your son-in-law and your children, whom I
beg to embrace tenderly. For me, I am
Your devoted brother
Segrais
[Main body of the letter:]
I cannot understand, dear sister, why you have not received the letters I have written you
quite regularly from London for a long time. It must be that my correspondent has
played me a trick in holding them back, as well as those [letters] for Joseph, who also
complains that I haven’t written him. <strong>The</strong>nceforth I shall use other channels. But in
Paris when you don’t have any correspondents in port cities, [then it is difficult] and you
don’t have the opportunity [to use those correspondents], so I found it simpler to send
them to London where every day so many vessels leave for all countries.
You speak, dear sister, of returning to France, where you have nothing in the world to
expect, [and] when we all think of returning to America. It would take volumes to tell
you about all the troubles we are experiencing here. Some glimmerings of fine days have
been visible, but in truth, they were only a vain promise of happy times. Everything
presages the most terrible storm, and makes one fear that the enormous trials we are
undergoing may be the prelude to even greater misfortune. In every way France is lost
for the next ten years. I am thinking seriously of leaving it. I have the idea of taking a
trip, first to Guadeloupe and then perhaps to visit you in the United States. [I also want to
visit] New York, where I should like to live. Be patient, you figure in all my plans, as
84 From the context (Marguerite has possibly married off at least one of her daughters) it seems possible
that the letter is after 1815, when Laura married. But Peter is not yet in Calcutta, where he arrived in
September 1810. And he seems to refer to daughter Eliza as unmarried, when in fact she married in late
1812. Hence it seems most likely that this letter was written in early 1810.
107