possession of the prize, he might, with great ease, deny
their contract, and disavow her claim of participation. She therefore
demanded security, and proposed, as a preliminary of the agreement, that
he should privately take her to wife, with a view to dispel all her
apprehensions of his inconstancy or deceit, as such a previous engagement
would be a check upon his behaviour, and keep him strictly to the letter
of their contract.

He could not help subscribing to the righteousness of this proposal,
which, nevertheless, he would have willingly waived, on the supposition
that they could not possibly be joined in the bands of wedlock with such
secrecy as the nature of the case absolutely required. This would have
been a difficulty soon removed, had the scene of the transaction been
laid in the metropolis of England, where passengers are plied in the
streets by clergymen, who prostitute their characters and consciences for
hire, in defiance of all decency and law; but in the kingdom of Hungary,
ecclesiastics are more scrupulous in the exercise of their function, and
the objection was, or supposed to be, altogether insurmountable; so that
they were fain to have recourse to an expedient, with which, after some
hesitation, our she-adventurer was satisfied. They joined hands in the
sight of Heaven, which they called to witness, and to judge the sincerity
of their vows, and engaged, in a voluntary oath, to confirm their union
by the sanction of the church, whenever a convenient opportunity for so
doing should occur.

The scruples of Teresa being thus removed, she admitted Ferdinand to the
privileges of a husband, which he enjoyed in stolen interviews, and
readily undertook to exert her whole power in promoting his suit with her
young mistress, because she now considered his interest as inseparably
connected with her own. Surely nothing could be more absurd or
preposterous than the articles of this covenant, which she insisted upon
with such inflexibility. How could she suppose that her pretended lover
would be restrained by an oath, when the very occasion of incurring it
was an intention to act in violation of all laws human and divine? and
yet such ridiculous conjuration is commonly the cement of every
conspiracy, how dark, how treacherous, how impious soever it may be: a
certain sign that there are some remains of religion left in the human
mind, even after every moral sentiment hath abandoned it; and that the
most exec