up, and the more effectually
he looks in, the more his aversion to her increases, and he curses her
from the bottom of his soul; nay, it must be a kind of excess of charity
if he so much as wishes God may forgive her.

The opposite circumstances of a wife and whore are such and so many, and
I have since seen the difference with such eyes, as I could dwell upon
the subject a great while; but my business is history. I had a long
scene of folly yet to run over. Perhaps the moral of all my story may
bring me back again to this part, and if it does I shall speak of it
fully.

While I continued in Holland I received several letters from my friend
(so I had good reason to call him) the merchant in Paris, in which he
gave me a farther account of the conduct of that rogue the Jew, and how
he acted after I was gone; how impatient he was while the said merchant
kept him in suspense, expecting me to come again; and how he raged when
he found I came no more.

It seems, after he found I did not come, he found out by his unwearied
inquiry where I had lived, and that I had been kept as a mistress by
some great person; but he could never learn by who, except that he
learnt the colour of his livery. In pursuit of this inquiry he guessed
at the right person, but could not make it out, or offer any positive
proof of it; but he found out the prince's gentleman, and talked so
saucily to him of it that the gentleman treated him, as the French call
it, _a coup de baton_--that is to say, caned him very severely, as he
deserved; and that not satisfying him, or curing his insolence, he was
met one night late upon the Pont Neuf, in Paris, by two men, who,
muffling him up in a great cloak, carried him into a more private place
and cut off both his ears, telling him it was for talking impudently of
his superiors; adding that he should take care to govern his tongue
better and behave with more manners, or the next time they would cut his
tongue out of his head.

This put a check to his sauciness that way; but he comes back to the
merchant and threatened to begin a process against him for corresponding
with me, and being accessory to the murder of the jeweller, &c.

The merchant found by his discourse that he supposed I was protected by
the said Prince de ----; nay, the rogue said he was sure I was in his
lodgings at Versailles, for he never had so much as the least intimation
of the way I was really gone; but that I was there he was certain, and