im, that's the best
of it."

Well, I cried for all that, and was heartily vexed, and that a great
while; but as Amy was always at my elbow, and always jogging it out of
my head with her mirth and her wit, it wore off again.

Then I told Amy all the story of my merchant, and how he had found me
out when I was in such a concern to find him; how it was true that he
lodged in St. Laurence Pountney's Lane; and how I had had all the story
of his misfortune, which she had heard of, in which he had lost above
L8000 sterling; and that he had told me frankly of it before she had
sent me any account of it, or at least before I had taken any notice
that I had heard of it.

Amy was very joyful at that part. "Well, madam, then," says Amy, "what
need you value the story of the prince, and going I know not whither
into Germany to lay your bones in another world, and learn the devil's
language, called High Dutch? You are better here by half," says Amy.
"Lawd, madam!" says she; "why, are you not as rich as Croesus?"

Well, it was a great while still before I could bring myself off of this
fancied sovereignty; and I, that was so willing once to be mistress to a
king, was now ten thousand times more fond of being wife to a prince.

So fast a hold has pride and ambition upon our minds, that when once it
gets admission, nothing is so chimerical but, under this possession, we
can form ideas of in our fancy and realise to our imagination. Nothing
can be so ridiculous as the simple steps we take in such cases; a man or
a woman becomes a mere _malade imaginaire_, and, I believe, may as
easily die with grief or run mad with joy (as the affair in his fancy
appears right or wrong) as if all was real, and actually under the
management of the person.

I had indeed two assistants to deliver me from this snare, and these
were, first, Amy, who knew my disease, but was able to do nothing as to
the remedy; the second, the merchant, who really brought the remedy, but
knew nothing of the distemper.

I remember, when all these disorders were upon my thoughts, in one of
the visits my friend the merchant made me, he took notice that he
perceived I was under some unusual disorder; he believed, he said, that
my distemper, whatever it was, lay much in my head, and it being summer
weather and very hot, proposed to me to go a little way into the air.

I started at his expression. "What!" says I; "do you think, then, that I
am crazed? You should, then, prop