hat at first I
yielded to the importunity of my circumstances, the misery of which the
devil dismally aggravated, to draw me to comply; for I confess I had
strong natural aversions to the crime at first, partly owing to a
virtuous education, and partly to a sense of religion; but the devil,
and that greater devil of poverty, prevailed; and the person who laid
siege to me did it in such an obliging, and I may almost say
irresistible, manner, all still managed by the evil spirit; for I must
be allowed to believe that he has a share in all such things, if not the
whole management of them. But, I say, it was carried on by that person
in such an irresistible manner that, as I said when I related the fact,
there was no withstanding it; these circumstances, I say, the devil
managed not only to bring me to comply, but he continued them as
arguments to fortify my mind against all reflection, and to keep me in
that horrid course I had engaged in, as if it were honest and lawful.

But not to dwell upon that now; this was a pretence, and here was
something to be said, though I acknowledge it ought not to have been
sufficient to me at all; but, I say, to leave that, all this was out of
doors; the devil himself could not form one argument, or put one reason
into my head now, that could serve for an answer--no, not so much as a
pretended answer to this question, why I should be a whore now.

It had for a while been a little kind of excuse to me that I was engaged
with this wicked old lord, and that I could not in honour forsake him;
but how foolish and absurd did it look to repeat the word "honour" on so
vile an occasion! as if a woman should prostitute her honour in point of
honour--horrid inconsistency! Honour called upon me to detest the crime
and the man too, and to have resisted all the attacks which, from the
beginning, had been made upon my virtue; and honour, had it been
consulted, would have preserved me honest from the beginning:

"For 'honesty' and 'honour' are the same."

This, however, shows us with what faint excuses and with what trifles we
pretend to satisfy ourselves, and suppress the attempts of conscience,
in the pursuit of agreeable crime, and in the possessing those pleasures
which we are loth to part with.

But this objection would now serve no longer, for my lord had in some
sort broke his engagements (I won't call it honour again) with me, and
had so far slighted me as fairly to justify my entire quitt