ease after your death;"
that I should see he was able to maintain me without it, and that it was
not for that that he followed me from Paris.

I was indeed surprised at that part of his offer, and he might easily
perceive it; it was not only what I did not expect, but it was what I
knew not what answer to make to. He had, indeed, removed my principal
objection--nay, all my objections, and it was not possible for me to
give any answer; for, if upon so generous an offer I should agree with
him, I then did as good as confess that it was upon the account of my
money that I refused him; and that though I could give up my virtue and
expose myself, yet I would not give up my money, which, though it was
true, yet was really too gross for me to acknowledge, and I could not
pretend to marry him upon that principle neither. Then as to having
him, and make over all my estate out of his hands, so as not to give him
the management of what I had, I thought it would be not only a little
Gothic and inhuman, but would be always a foundation of unkindness
between us, and render us suspected one to another; so that, upon the
whole, I was obliged to give a new turn to it, and talk upon a kind of
an elevated strain, which really was not in my thoughts, at first, at
all; for I own, as above, the divesting myself of my estate and putting
my money out of my hand was the sum of the matter that made me refuse to
marry; but, I say, I gave it a new turn upon this occasion, as
follows:--

I told him I had, perhaps, different notions of matrimony from what the
received custom had given us of it; that I thought a woman was a free
agent as well as a man, and was born free, and, could she manage herself
suitably, might enjoy that liberty to as much purpose as the men do;
that the laws of matrimony were indeed otherwise, and mankind at this
time acted quite upon other principles, and those such that a woman gave
herself entirely away from herself, in marriage, and capitulated, only
to be, at best, but an upper servant, and from the time she took the man
she was no better or worse than the servant among the Israelites, who
had his ears bored--that is, nailed to the door-post--who by that act
gave himself up to be a servant during life; that the very nature of the
marriage contract was, in short, nothing but giving up liberty, estate,
authority, and everything to the man, and the woman was indeed a mere
woman ever after--that is to say, a slave.

He rep