I remember the man: he died of an apoplexy from luxury. You see that each of his intentions has lasted just four hours, so that he has been temperate from the end of one meal to the beginning of the next. Each of his meals was concluded with a determination never to commit another debauch; and his last resolution was the only one that he kept, for he died before the opportunity of breaking it arrived.
RECAB.
Do men usually design to do a thing so often without doing it?
BELPHEGOR.
Many are very resolute between their infirmities, and perfectly virtuous all their lives, except at the moment of being frail.
RECAB.
But I should think this habitual austerity must impair the enjoyments of a voluptuous man. Even the attempt to be virtuous must disturb him, though not so much as the really being so.
BELPHEGOR.
Why no; a man living in a course of pleasures, which he knows to be ruinous, is frequently molested by remorse, to quiet which he determines upon abstinence ever after; and this he does, not that he may be abstemious in future, but that he may be easy at the present moment. Thus men form intentions of virtue that they may enjoy their vices in peace.