on in the
vessels. I was all on fire with the sight, and began to wonder what it
was that was coming to me.

However, to let him see that I was not unqualified to receive benefits,
I turned about: "My lord," says I, "your Highness is resolved to
conquer, by your bounty, the very gratitude of your servants; you will
leave no room for anything but thanks, and make those thanks useless
too, by their bearing no proportion to the occasion."

"I love, child," says he, "to see everything suitable. A fine gown and
petticoat, a fine laced head, a fine face and neck, and no necklace,
would not have made the object perfect. But why that blush, my dear?"
says the prince. "My lord," said I, "all your gifts call for blushes,
but, above all, I blush to receive what I am so ill able to merit, and
may become so ill also."

Thus far I am a standing mark of the weakness of great men in their
vice, that value not squandering away immense wealth upon the most
worthless creatures; or, to sum it up in a word, they raise the value of
the object which they pretend to pitch upon by their fancy; I say, raise
the value of it at their own expense; give vast presents for a ruinous
favour, which is so far from being equal to the price that nothing will
at last prove more absurd than the cost men are at to purchase their own
destruction.

I could not, in the height of all this fine doings--I say, I could not
be without some just reflection, though conscience was, as I said, dumb,
as to any disturbance it gave me in my wickedness. My vanity was fed up
to such a height that I had no room to give way to such reflections. But
I could not but sometimes look back with astonishment at the folly of
men of quality, who, immense in their bounty as in their wealth, give to
a profusion and without bounds to the most scandalous of our sex, for
granting them the liberty of abusing themselves and ruining both.

I, that knew what this carcase of mine had been but a few years before;
how overwhelmed with grief, drowned in tears, frightened with the
prospect of beggary, and surrounded with rags and fatherless children;
that was pawning and selling the rags that covered me for a dinner, and
sat on the ground despairing of help and expecting to be starved, till
my children were snatched from me to be kept by the parish; I, that was
after this a whore for bread, and, abandoning conscience and virtue,
lived with another woman's husband; I, that was despised by all my