ived safely at
Paris, having been absent two years, wanting about eleven days, as
above.

I found the little family we left just as we left them, and Amy cried
for joy when she saw me, and I almost did the same.

The prince took his leave of me the night before, for, as he told me, he
knew he should be met upon the road by several persons of quality, and
perhaps by the princess herself; so we lay at two different inns that
night, lest some should come quite to the place, as indeed it happened.

After this I saw him not for above twenty days, being taken up in his
family, and also with business; but he sent me his gentleman to tell me
the reason of it, and bid me not be uneasy, and that satisfied me
effectually.

In all this affluence of my good fortune I did not forget that I had
been rich and poor once already alternately, and that I ought to know
that the circumstances I was now in were not to be expected to last
always; that I had one child, and expected another; and if I had bred
often, it would something impair me in the great article that supported
my interest--I mean, what he called beauty; that as that declined, I
might expect the fire would abate, and the warmth with which I was now
so caressed would cool, and in time, like the other mistresses of great
men, I might be dropped again; and that therefore it was my business to
take care that I should fall as softly as I could.

I say, I did not forget, therefore, to make as good provision for
myself as if I had had nothing to have subsisted on but what I now
gained; whereas I had not less than ten thousand pounds, as I said
above, which I had amassed, or secured rather, out of the ruins of my
faithful friend the jeweller, and which he, little thinking of what was
so near him when he went out, told me, though in a kind of a jest, was
all my own, if he was knocked on the head, and which, upon that title, I
took care to preserve.

My greatest difficulty now was how to secure my wealth and to keep what
I had got; for I had greatly added to this wealth by the generous bounty
of the Prince ----, and the more by the private, retired mode of living,
which he rather desired for privacy than parsimony; for he supplied me
for a more magnificent way of life than I desired, if it had been
proper.

I shall cut short the history of this prosperous wickedness with telling
you I brought him a third son, within little more than eleven months
after our return from Italy; th