Thinking that France was a dangerous place to live in, he removed his
family to England, where soon afterwards his daughter was married,
although, as Lord Braybrooke remarks, we are not told how she became
acquainted with Pepys. St. Michel was greatly pleased that his daughter
had become the wife of a true Protestant, and she herself said to him,
kissing his eyes: "Dear father, though in my tender years I was by my low
fortune in this world deluded to popery, by the fond dictates thereof I
have now (joined with my riper years, which give me some understanding) a
man to my husband too wise and one too religious to the Protestant
religion to suffer my thoughts to bend that way any more."

[These particulars are obtained from an interesting letter from
Balthasar St. Michel to Pepys, dated "Deal, Feb. 8, 1673-4," and
printed in "Life, Journals, and Correspondence of Samuel Pepys,"
1841, vol. i., pp. 146-53.]

Alexander St. Michel kept up his character for fecklessness through life,
and took out patents for curing smoking chimneys, purifying water, and
moulding bricks. In 1667 he petitioned the king, asserting that he had
discovered King Solomon's gold and silver mines, and the Diary of the same
date contains a curious commentary upon these visions of wealth:--

"March 29, 1667. 4s. a week which his (Balty St. Michel's) father
receives of the French church is all the subsistence his father and
mother have, and about; L20 a year maintains them."

As already noted, Pepys was married on December 1st, 1655. This date is
given on the authority of the Registers of St. Margaret's Church,
Westminster,