One of the first things I saw, on my release from prison, was the announcement in the newspapers of the solemnization of the marriage. The bank also informed me by letter that the amount there standing to the credit of my ward had been transferred to her husband's name.
Well, at last Bessy had got the ne plus ultra of husbands. For, really, the man who has reached his two-and-thirtieth year without sinning against the canonical prescriptions must indeed be a superlative treasure in the eyes of a lady who knows how to appreciate the value of such renunciation.
CHAPTER XX
CONFESSION
Well, the long and short of it is, confess I must, that I have a sweetheart for whose sake I have been unfaithful, not only to my wife, but to my muse also—a sweetheart who has immeshed me in her spider's web, and sucked my heart's blood dry, who has appropriated my best ideas, made me scamper after her from one end of the kingdom to the other, and whose slave I was and still am. Often have I wasted half my fortune upon her, and rushed blindly into misfortune to please her. For her have I patiently endured insult, ridicule, and reprobation. For her sake I have staked life and liberty.
Sometimes, when I have felt the pinch of her tyranny, I have tried to escape from her; but she has enticed me back again and would not let me go.
Now, if she had been some pretty young damsel, there might have been some excuse for me. But she was a nasty, old, painted figure-head of a beldame; a flirting, faithless, fickle, foul-mouthed, scandal-mongering old liar, whom the whole world courts, who makes fools of all her wooers, and changes her lover as often as she changes her dress.
Her name is Politica,[114] and may the plague take her.
[114] Politics.