r, I unlaced my stays, and threw myself on the outside of the
bedclothes, in all the loosest undress. Here I gave myself up to the old
insipid privy shifts of my self-viewing, self-touching self-enjoying,
in fine, to all the means of self knowledge I could devise, in search
of the pleasure that fled before me, and tantalized with that unknown
something that was out of my reach; thus all only served to enflame
myself, and to provoke violently my desires, whilst the one thing
needful to their satisfaction was not at hand, and I could have bit my
finger for representing it so ill. After then wearying and fatiguing
myself with grasping shadows, whilst that most sensible part of me
disdained to content itself with less than realities, the strong
yearnings, the urgent struggles of nature towards the melting relief,
and the extreme self-agitations I had used to come at it, had wearied
and thrown me into a kind of unquiet sleep: for, if I tossed and threw
about my limbs in proportion to the distraction of my dreams, as I had
reason to believe I did, a bystander could not have helped seeing all
for love. And one there was it seems; for waking out of my very short
slumber, I found my hand locked in that of a young man, who was.
kneeling at my bed-side, and begging my pardon for his boldness: but
that being a son to the lady to whom, this bed-chamber, he knew,
belonged, he had slipped by the servant of the shop, as he supposed,
unperceived, when finding me asleep, his first ideas were to withdraw;
but that he had been fixed and detained there by a power he could better
account for, than resist.

"What shall I say? my emotions of fear and surprise were instantly
subdued by those of the pleasure I bespoke in great presence of mind
from the turn this adventure might take. He seemed to me no other than a
pitying angel, dropt out of the clouds: for he was young and perfectly
handsome, which was more than even I had asked for, man, in general,
being all that my utmost desires had pointed at. I thought then I could
not put too much encouragement into my eyes and voice; I regretted no
leading advances; no matter for his after-opinion of my forwardness,
so it might bring him to the point of answering my pressing demands of
present case; it was not now with his thoughts but his actions that my
business immediately lay. I raised then my head, and told him, in a soft
tone, that tended to prescribe the same key to him, that his mamma was
gone