lford--Why then
shall I not know if my beloved offers to go out in my absence?--And shall
I not see whether she receives me with tenderness at my return? But this
is not all: I have a foreboding that something affecting will happen
while I am out. But of this more in its place.

And now, Belford, wilt thou, or wilt thou not, allow, that it is a right
thing to be sick?--Lord, Jack, so much delight do I take in my
contrivances, that I shall be half sorry when the occasion for them is
over; for never, never, shall I again have such charming exercise for my
invention.

Mean time these plaguy women are so impertinent, so full of reproaches,
that I know not how to do any thing but curse them. And then, truly,
they are for helping me out with some of their trite and vulgar
artifices. Sally, particularly, who pretends to be a mighty contriver,
has just now, in an insolent manner, told me, on my rejecting her
proffered aids, that I had no mind to conquer; and that I was so wicked
as to intend to marry, though I would not own it to her.

Because this little devil made her first sacrifice at my altar, she
thinks she may take any liberty with me: and what makes her outrageous at
times is, that I have, for a long time, studiously, as she says, slighted
her too-readily-offered favours: But is it not very impudent in her to
think, that I will be any man's successor? It is not come to that
neither. This, thou knowest, was always my rule--Once any other man's,
and I know it, and never more mine. It is for such as thou, and thy
brethren, to take up with harlots. I have been always aiming at the
merit of a first discoverer.

The more devil I, perhaps thou wilt say, to endeavour to corrupt the
uncorrupted.

But I say, not; since, hence, I have but very few adulteries to answer
for.

One affair, indeed, at Paris, with a married lady [I believe I never told
thee of it] touched my conscience a little: yet brought on by the spirit
of intrigue, more than by sheer wickedness. I'll give it thee in brief:

'A French marquis, somewhat in years, employed by his court in a public
function at that of Madrid, had put his charming young new-married wife
under the controul and wardship, as I may say, of his insolent sister, an
old prude.

'I saw the lady at the opera. I liked her at first sight, and better at
second, when I knew the situation she was in. So, pretending to make my
addresses to the prude, got admittance to both.

'Th