s.

About one in the morning, while his gentleman was yet with him, I begged
leave to withdraw, supposing he would go to bed; but he took the hint,
and said, "I'm not going to bed yet; pray let me see you again."

I took this time to undress me, and to come in a new dress, which was,
in a manner, _une dishabille_, but so fine, and all about me so clean
and so agreeable, that he seemed surprised. "I thought," says he, "you
could not have dressed to more advantage than you had done before; but
now," says he, "you charm me a thousand times more, if that be
possible."

"It is only a loose habit, my lord," said I, "that I may the better wait
on your Highness." He pulls me to him. "You are perfectly obliging,"
says he; and, sitting on the bedside, says he, "Now you shall be a
princess, and know what it is to oblige the gratefullest man alive;" and
with that he took me in his arms.... I can go no farther in the
particulars of what passed at that time, but it ended in this, that, in
short, I lay with him all night.

I have given you the whole detail of this story to lay it down as a
black scheme of the way how unhappy women are ruined by great men; for,
though poverty and want is an irresistible temptation to the poor,
vanity and great things are as irresistible to others. To be courted by
a prince, and by a prince who was first a benefactor, then an admirer;
to be called handsome, the finest woman in France, and to be treated as
a woman fit for the bed of a prince--these are things a woman must have
no vanity in her, nay, no corruption in her, that is not overcome by it;
and my case was such that, as before, I had enough of both.

I had now no poverty attending me; on the contrary, I was mistress of
ten thousand pounds before the prince did anything for me. Had I been
mistress of my resolution, had I been less obliging, and rejected the
first attack, all had been safe; but my virtue was lost before, and the
devil, who had found the way to break in upon me by one temptation,
easily mastered me now by another; and I gave myself up to a person who,
though a man of high dignity, was yet the most tempting and obliging
that ever I met with in my life.

I had the same particular to insist upon here with the prince that I had
with my gentleman before. I hesitated much at consenting at first
asking, but the prince told me princes did not court like other men;
that they brought more powerful arguments; and he very prettily added