, lest the husband, instead of taking her advice touching
the young lady, should seek to compromise the affair, by offering her in
marriage to her debaucher, a proffer which, if accepted, would overwhelm
the mother with vexation and despair. He therefore chose to trust to the
effects of lenient time, which he hoped would gradually weaken the
resentment of this Penthesilea, and dissolve his connexion with the other
parts of the family, from which he longed to be totally detached.

How well soever he might have succeeded in his attempts to shake off the
yoke of the mother, who by her situation in life was restrained from
prosecuting those measures her resentment had planned against his
fortitude and indifference, he would have found greater difficulty than
he had foreseen, in disengaging himself from the daughter, whose
affections he had won under the most solemn professions of honour and
fidelity, and who, now she was debarred of his company and conversation,
and in danger of losing him for ever, had actually taken the resolution
of disclosing the amour to her father, that he might interpose in behalf
of her peace and reputation, and secure her happiness by the sanction of
the church.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

OUR HERO DEPARTS FROM VIENNA, AND QUITS THE DOMAIN OF VENUS FOR THE ROUGH
FIELD OF MARS.

Luckily for our adventurer, before she adhered to this determination, the
young Count de Melvil was summoned to Presburg by his father, who desired
to see him, before he should take the field, in consequence of a rupture
between the Emperor and the French King; and Fathom of course quitted
Vienna, in order to attend his patron, after he and Renaldo had resided
two whole years in that capital, where the former had made himself
perfect in all the polite exercises, become master of the French tongue,
and learned to speak the Italian with great facility; over and above
those other accomplishments in which we have represented him as an
inimitable original.

As for the young Count, his exteriors were so much improved by the
company to which he had access, since his departure from his father's
house, that his parents were equally surprised and overjoyed at the
alteration. All that awkwardness and rusticity, which hung upon his
deportment, was, like the rough coat of a diamond, polished away; the
connexion and disposition of his limbs seemed to have been adjusted anew;
his carriage was become easy, his air perfectly genteel, a