However, it seems, Duncan had told them their own names and the names of their suitors, and told them farther, how soon they were both to be married, and that too directly to their heart's content, as they said rejoicingly to themselves, and made their mutual gratulations.
They went away each satisfied that she should have her own lover, but Christallina laughed at Mr. Campbell for assigning the alderman to Urbana; and Urbana laughed at him for promising the courtier to the arms of Christallina.
This a pretty good figure of the tempers of two reigning toasts with regard to one another.
First, their curiosity made them, from resolving to be concealed, discover one another wilfully; from utter strangers grow as familiar as old friends in a moment, swear one another to secrecy, and exchange the sentiments of their hearts together; and, from being friends, become envious of each other's enjoying a similitude of happiness; the compliments made on either side face to face, were, upon the turning of the back, turned into reflections, detraction, and ridicule; each was a self-lover and admirer of her own beauty and merit, and a despiser of the other's.
However, Duncan Campbell, proved at last to be in the right; Urbana was wrong in her opinion of Christallina's want of power over Secretarius, and Christallina was as much out in her opinion that Urbana would miss in her aim of obtaining Stiffrump; for they both proved in the right of what they thought with regard to their own dear single persons, and were made happy according to their expectations, just at the time foretold by Mr. Campbell.
Christallina's ill wishes did not hinder Urbana from being mistress of Alderman Stiffrump's person and stock, nor did Urbana's hinder Christallina from showing herself a shining bride at the Ring, in Secretarius's gilded chariot, drawn by six prancers of the proud Belgian kind, with her half dozen of liveries with favours in their hats, waiting her return at the gate of Hyde Park.
Both loved and both envied, but both allowed of Mr. Campbell's foreknowledge.
Having told you two very sorrowful passages, and one tolerably successful and entertaining; I shall now relate to you another of my own knowledge, that is mixed up with the grievous and the pleasant, and chequered, as it were, with the shade and the sunshine of fortune.
Though there are vicissitudes in every stage of life under the sun, and not one ever ran continually on with the same series of prosperity; yet those conditions which are the most liable to the signal alterations of fortune, are the conditions of merchants; for professed gamesters I reckon in a manner as men of no condition of life at all; but what comes under the statute of vagabonds.
It was, indeed, as the reader would guess, a worthy and a wealthy merchant, who was to run through these different circumstances of being. He came and visited our Mr. Campbell in the year 1707, he found him amidst a crowd of consulters; and being very eager and solicitous to know his own fortune just at that critical juncture of time, he begged of him, if possible, to adjourn his other clients to the day following, and sacrifice that one wholly to his use; which as it was probably more important than all the others together, so he wrote down that he would render the time spent about it more advantageous to Mr. Campbell; and, by way of previous encouragement, threw him down ten guineas as a retaining fee.