Yet he sought to build up a career of glory and wealth on the flimsy foundation. Fighting in the cause of modern learning with the headlong rashness of a dragoon charging up to the enemy's guns, he wrote the _Lettres to Madame Dacier_, he undertook to rival the Dutch literary papers with his _Mémoires littéraires_; but the public who had appreciated the _Chef d'oeuvre_, were slow in subscribing to the new paper. Unlucky Matanasius was doomed to write only one masterpiece, for all his subsequent productions fell dead from the press.
Once more in France, with brain teeming with schemes and but little money in his pocket, the man, who was now nearing forty, fell back upon his last resource, a new love-affair. The victim this time was Suzanne, Colonel de Marconnay's daughter, with whom he eloped to England (1722).
The duly-married couple remained in England twelve years. What their life and that of their children must have been, a few scattered letters help us to understand. The father-in-law declining to help the wanderers, Saint-Hyacinthe, who decidedly had renounced the Catholic faith, turned to the Huguenot community. The poorer among them eked out a scant livelihood by teaching French, writing for Dutch booksellers, translating English books; the most needy received relief--money and clothing. The brilliant dragoon, who had been feasted in Paris, did not blush to hold out his hand and accept the mite doled out by the trustees of the "Fund for the poor Protestants."
There was still in the man an inexhaustible fund of illusion. He could rail and boast and dream. He seems never to have given up the hope of attaining to reputation and competence. In the blackest year of his life, he began translating _Robinson Crusoe_ (1720), but, wearying of the task, left the Dutchman Justus van Effen to finish it. A letter of his to M. de Burigny, dated 6th September 1727, is sweetly optimistic. "Cross the Channel," he says, to his friend, "but, for Heaven's sake, come alone; don't bring your man along with you. I can manage to accommodate you with rooms in my house, and receive you at my table. What you will eat," he adds, with a flourish of liberality, "with what I am obliged to have for my own family, will not cost me more than two sous a day."[300]