The whore skulks about in lodgings, is visited in the dark, disowned upon all occasions before God and man; is maintained, indeed, for a time, but is certainly condemned to be abandoned at last, and left to the miseries of fate and her own just disaster. If she has any children, her endeavour is to get rid of them, and not maintain them; and if she lives, she is certain to see them all hate her, and be ashamed of her. While the vice rages, and the man is in the devil's hand, she has him; and while she has him, she makes a prey of him; but if he happens to fall sick, if any disaster befalls him, the cause of all lies upon her. He is sure to lay all his misfortunes at her door; and if once he comes to repentance, or makes but one step towards a reformation, he begins with her—leaves her, uses her as she deserves, hates her, abhors her, and sees her no more; and that with this never-failing addition, namely, that the more sincere and unfeigned his repentance is, the more earnestly he looks 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, à 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 certain that the merchant was privy to it. The merchant bade him defiance. However, he gave him a great deal of trouble and put him to a great charge, and had like to have brought him in for a party to my escape; in which case he would have been obliged to have produced me, and that in the penalty of some capital sum of money.
But the merchant was too many for him another way, for he brought an information against him for a cheat; wherein laying down the whole fact, how he intended falsely to accuse the widow of the jeweller for the supposed murder of her husband; that he did it purely to get the jewels from her; and that he offered to bring him (the merchant) in, to be confederate with him, and to share the jewels between them; proving also his design to get the jewels into his hands, and then to have dropped the prosecution upon condition of my quitting the jewels to him. Upon this charge he got him laid by the heels; so he was sent to the Conciergerie—that is to say, to Bridewell—and the merchant cleared. He got out of jail in a little while, though not without the help of money, and continued teasing the merchant a long while, and at last threatening to assassinate and murder him. So the merchant, who, having buried his wife about two months before, was now a single man, and not knowing what such a villain might do, thought fit to quit Paris, and came away to Holland also.
It is most certain that, speaking of originals, I was the source and spring of all that trouble and vexation to this honest gentleman; and as it was afterwards in my power to have made him full satisfaction, and did not, I cannot say but I added ingratitude to all the rest of my follies; but of that I shall give a fuller account presently.
I was surprised one morning, when, being at the merchant's house who he had recommended me to in Rotterdam, and being busy in his counting-house, managing my bills, and preparing to write a letter to him to Paris, I heard a noise of horses at the door, which is not very common in a city where everybody passes by water; but he had, it seems, ferried over the Maas from Willemstadt, and so came to the very door, and I, looking towards the door upon hearing the horses, saw a gentleman alight and come in at the gate. I knew nothing, and expected nothing, to be sure, of the person; but, as I say, was surprised, and indeed more than ordinarily surprised, when, coming nearer to me, I saw it was my merchant of Paris, my benefactor, and indeed my deliverer.
I confess it was an agreeable surprise to me, and I was exceeding glad to see him, who was so honourable and so kind to me, and who indeed had saved my life. As soon as he saw me he ran to me, took me in his arms, and kissed me with a freedom that he never offered to take with me before. "Dear Madam ——," says he, "I am glad to see you safe in this country; if you had stayed two days longer in Paris you had been undone." I was so glad to see him that I could not speak a good while, and I burst out into tears without speaking a word for a minute; but I recovered that disorder, and said, "The more, sir, is my obligation to you that saved my life;" and added, "I am glad to see you here, that I may consider how to balance an account in which I am so much your debtor." "You and I will adjust that matter easily," says he, "now we are so near together. Pray where do you lodge?" says he.