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head, a fine face and neck and no necklace, would not have made the object perfect. But why that blush, my dear?" says the prince. "My lord," said I, "all your gifts call for blushes, but above all I blush to receive what I am so little able to merit, and may become so ill also."

Thus far I am a standing mark of the weakness of great men in their vice, that value not squandering away immense wealth upon the most worthless creatures; or, to sum it up in a word,|| they raise the value of the object which they pretend to pitch upon by their fancy. I say, raise the value of it at their own expense; give vast presents for a ruinous favour which is so far from being equal to the price, that nothing will at last prove more absurd than the cost men are at to purchase their own destruction.

I could not, in the height of all these fine doings, I say, I could not be without some just reflection, though conscience was, as I said, dumb as to any disturbance it gave me in my wickedness. My vanity was fed up to such a height, that I had no room to give way to such reflections. But I could not but sometimes look back with astonishment at the folly of men of quality, who, immense in their bounty as in their wealth, give to a profusion and without bounds to the most scandalous of our sex, for granting them the liberty of amusing themselves and ruining both.

I, that knew what this carcase of mine had ocen but a few years before; how overwhelmed with grief, drowned in tears, frighted with the prospect of beggary, and surrounded with rags and fatherless children, that was pawning and selling the rags that covered me for a dinner, and sat on the ground despairing of help, and expecting to be starved till my children were snatched from me to be kept by the parish; I, that was after this a whore for bread, and abandoning conscience and virtue, lived with another woman's husband; I that was despised by all my relations and my husband's too; I, that was left so entirely deso. late, friendless, and helpless, that I knew not how to get the least help to keep me from starving; that I should be caressed by a prince, for the honour of having the scandalous use of my prostituted body, common before to his inferiors, and perhaps would not have denied one of his footmen but a little while before, if I could have got my bread by it.

I say, I could not but reflect upon the brutality and blindness of mankind; that because nature had given me a good skin and some agreeable features, should suffer that beauty to be such a bait to appetite, as to do such sordid unaccountable things to obtain the possession of it.

It is for this reason that I have so largely set down the particulars of the caresses I was treated with by the jeweller, and also by this prince. Not to make the story an incentive to the vice, which I am now such a sorrowful penitent for being guilty of, (God forbid any should make so vile a use of so good a design,) but to draw the just picture of a man enslaved to the rage of his vicious appetite; how he defaces the image of God in his soul; dethrones his reason, causes conscience to abdicate the possession, and exalts sense into the vacant throne; how he deposes the man and exalts the brute.

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Oh! could we hear now the reproaches this great man afterwards loaded himself with, when he grew weary of this admired creature, and became sick of his vice! how profitable would the report of them be to the reader of this story; but had he himself also known the dirty history of my actings upon the stage of life, that little time I had been in the world, how much more severe would those reproaches have been upon himself, but I shall come to this again.

I lived in this gay sort of retirement almost three years, in which time no amour of such a kind, sure, was ever carried up so high. The prince knew no bounds to his munificence; he could give me nothing either for my wearing, or using, or eating, or drinking, more than he had done from the beginning.

His presents were after that in gold, and very frequent and large, often a hundred pistoles, never less than fifty at a time; and I must do myself the justice, that I seemed rather backward to receive, than craving and encroaching; not that I had not an avaricious temper, nor was it that I did not foresee that this was my harvest in which I was to gather up, and that it would not last long; but it was that really his bounty always anticipated my expectations, and even my wishes; and he gave me money so fast, that he rather poured it in upon me than left me room to ask it; so that before I could spend fifty pis toles, I had always a hundred to make it up.

After I had been near a year and a half in his arms as above, or thereabouts, I proved with child.

I did not take any notice of it to him till I was satisfied that I was not deceived; when one morning early, when we were in bed toge. ther, I said to him, "My lord, I doubt your highness never gives yourself leave to think what the case should be, if I should have the honour to be with child by you."-" Why, my dear," says he, "we are able to keep it if such a thing should happen. I hope you are not concerned about that."" No, my lord," said I, “I should think myself very happy if I could bring your highness a son; I should hope to see him a lieutenant-general of the king's armies by the interest of his father, and by his own merit." sure yourself, child," says he, "if it should be so, I will not refuse owning him for my son, though it be as they call it, a natural son; and shall never slight or neglect him for the sake of his mother." Then he began to importune me to know if it were so, but I positively denied it so long, till at last I was able to give him the satis faction of knowing it himself by the motion of the child within me.

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He professed himself overjoyed at the discovery, but told me that now it was absolutely necessary for me to quit the confinement which, he said, I had suffered for his sake, and to take a house somewhere in the country, in order for health as well as for privacy, against my lyingin. This was quite out of my way, but the prince, who was a man of pleasure, had, it seems, several retreats of this kind, which he had made use of, I suppose, upon like occasions; and so leaving it, as it were, to his gentleman, he provided a very convenient house, about four miles south of Paris, at the village of where I had very agreeable lodgings, good gar

dens, and all things very easy to my content; but one thing did not please me at all, viz. that an old woman was provided, and put into the house to furnish everything necessary to my lying-in, and to assist at my travail.

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Then I recommended my woman, Amy, to his favour for a hundred pistoles, on condition she gave up the keys as above to his gentleman, and his gentleman's receipt for them. When he saw this," My dear child," said he, and took me in I did not like this old woman at all; she his arms, "what! have you been making your looked so like a spy upon me, or (as sometimes will and disposing of your effects? Pray who do I was frightened to imagine) like one set pri- you make your universal heir?"—" So far as to vately to dispatch me out of the world, as might do justice to your highness, in case of mortality, best suit with the circumstances of my lying-in; || I have, my lord," said I," and who should I disand when his highness came the next time to see pose the valuable things to, which I have had which was not many days, 1 expostulated from your hand as pledges of your favour and a little on the subject of the old woman; and testimonies of your bounty, but to the giver of by the management of my tongue, as well as them? If the child should live, your highness will, by the strength of my reasoning, I convinced him I do not question, act like yourself in that part, that it would not be at all conveniont; that it and I shall have the utmost satisfaction that it would be the greater risk on his side; and at will be well used by your direction." first or at last it would certainly expose him and "I have me also. I assured him that my servant, being an English woman, never knew to that hour who his highness was; that I always called him the Count de Clerac, and that she knew nothing else of him, nor ever should; that if he would give me leave to choose proper persons for my use, it should be so ordered, that not one of them should know who he was, or perhaps ever see his face; and that for the reality of the child that should be born, his highness who had alone been at the first of it, should, if he pleased, be present in the room all the time, so that he would need no witnesses on that account.

This discourse fully satisfied him, so that he ordered his gentleman to dismiss the old woman the same day, and without any difficulty I sent my maid Amy to Calais, and thence to Dover, where she got an English midwife and nurse, to come over on purpose to attend an English lady of quality, as they stiled me, for four months certain.

This midwife Amy had agreed to pay a hundred guineas to, and bear her charges to Paris and back again to Dover. The poor woman that was to be my nurse had twenty pounds, and the same charges as the other.

I was very easy when Amy returned, and the more because she brought with the midwife a good motherly sort of a woman, who was to be her assistant, and would be very helpful on occasion; and bespoke a man-midwife at Paris too, if there should be any necessity for his help. Having thus made provision for everything, the count, for so we all called him in public, came as often to see me as I could expect, and continued exceeding kind, as he had always been. One day, conversing together upon the subject of my being with child, I told him how all things were in order, but that I had a strange apprehension that I should die with that child. He smiled, So all ladies say, my dear," says he, "when they are with child."" Well, however, my lord," said I, "it is but just that care should be taken that what you have bestowed in your excess of bounty upon me should not be lost;" and upon this I pulled a paper out of my bosom, folded up, but not sealed, and I read it to him, wherein I had ordered that all the plate and jewels, and fine furniture which his highness had given me, should be restored to him by my woman, and the keys be immediately delivered to his gentleman, in case of disaster.

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I could see he took this very well. forsaken all the ladies in Paris," says he, "for you, and I have lived every day since I knew you to see that you know to merit all that a man of honour can do for you. Be easy, child, I hope you will not die, and all you have is your own, to do with it what you please."

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I was then within about two months of my time, and that soon wore off. When I found my time was come, it fell out very happily that he was in the house, and I entreated he would continue a few hours in the house, which he agreed to. They called his highness to come into the room, if he pleased, as I had offered and had de. sired him; and I sent word I would make as few cries as possible to prevent disturbing him. came into the room once, and called to me to be of good courage, it would soon be over, and then he withdrew again; and in about half an hour more Amy carried him the news that I was delivered, and had brought him a charming boy. He gave her ten pistoles for her news, stayed till they had adjusted things about me, and then came into the room again, cheered me and spoke kindly to me, and looked on the child, then withdrew, and came again the next day to visit me.

Since this, and when I have looked back upon these things with eyes unpossessed with crime, when the wicked part has appeared in its clearer light, and I have seen it in its own natural colours, when no more blinded with the glittering appearances, which at that time deluded me, as in like cases, if I may guess at others by myself, too much possessed the mind. I say, since this, I have often wondered with what pleasure or satisfaction the prince could look upon the poor innocent infant, which, though his own, and that he might that way have some attachment in his affections to it, yet must always afterwards be a remembrance to him of his most early crime, and, which was worse, must bear upon itself, unmerited, an eternal mark of infamy, which should be spoken of, upon all occasions, to its reproach, from the folly of its father and wickedness of its mother.

Great men are indeed delivered from the burden of their natural children, or bastards, as to their maintenance. This is the main affliction in other cases, where there is no substance sufficient without breaking into the fortunes of the family. In those cases, either a man's legitimate children suffer, which is very unnatural, or the unfortunate mother of that illegitimate birth, a dreadful alternative, either of being turned off with her child,

and be left to starve, &c., or of seeing the poor|| these things could not be helped; that they infant packed off with a piece of money to some of those she-butchers, who take children off their hands, as it is called, that is to say, starve them, and in a word, murder them.

Great men, I say, are delivered from this burden, because they are always furnished to supply the expense of their out of the way offspring, by making little assignments upon the bank of Lyons, or the Town-house of Paris, and settling those sums, to be received for the maintenance of such expense as they see cause.

served for a spur to the spirits of brave men, inspired them with the principles of gallantry, and prompted them to brave actions; that though it might be true that the mention of illegitimacy might attend the name, yet that personal virtue placed a man of honour above the reproach of his birth; that, as he had no share in the offence, he could have no concern at the blot; when, having by his own merit placed himself out of the reach of scandal, his fame should drown the memory of his beginning.

Thus, in the case of this child of mine, while That as it was usual for men of quality to he and I conversed, there was no need to make make such little escapes, so the number of their any appointment as an appendage or maintenance natural children were so great, and they genefor the child or its nurse, for he supplied me more rally took such good care of their education, than sufficiently for all those things; but after- that some of the greatest men in the world had wards, when time, and a particular circumstance, a bend in their coat of arms, and that it was of put an end to our conversing together, as such no consequence to them, especially when their things always meet with a period, and generally fame began to rise upon the basis of their acbreak off abruptly, I say, after that, I found he ap-quired merit; and upon this he began to reckon pointed the children a settled allowance, by an up to me some of the greatest families in France assignment of annual rent upon the bank of Lyons, and in England also. which was sufficient for bringing them handsomely, though privately, up in the world, and that not in a manner unworthy of their father's blood, though I came to be sunk and forgotten in the case; nor did the children ever know anything of their mother to this day, other than as you may have an account hereafter.

This carried off our discourse for a time; but I went further with him once, removing the discourse from the part attending our children to the reproach which those children would be apt to throw upon us, their originals; and, when speaking a little too feelingly on the subject, he began to receive the impression a little deeper than I wished he had done. At last he told me I had almost acted the confessor to him; that I might, perhaps, preach a more dangerous doctrine to him than we should either of us like, or than I was aware of; "For, my dear," says he, if once we come to talk of repentance, we must talk of parting."

But to look back to the particular observation I was making, which I hope may be of use to those who read my story, I say it was something wonderful to me to see this person so exceedingly delighted at the birth of this child, and so pleased with it; for he would sit and look at it," and with an air of seriousness sometimes, a great while together, and particularly, I observed, he loved to look at it when it was asleep.

It was indeed a lovely, charming child, and had a certain vivacity in its countenance that is far from being common to all children so young, and he would often say to me, that he believed there was something extraordinary in the child, and he did not doubt but he would come to be a great man.

I could never hear him say so, but though secretly it pleased me, yet it so closely touched me another way that I could not refrain sighing, and sometimes tears; and one time in particular it so affected me that I could not conceal it from him; but when he saw tears run down my face there was no concealing the occasion from him; he was too importunate to be denied in a thing of that moment, so I frankly answered: "It sensibly affects me, my lord," said I, "that whatever the merit of this little creature may be, he must always have a bend on his arms. The disaster of his birth will be always, not only a blot to his honour, but a bar to his fortunes in the world. Our affections will still be ever his affliction, and his mother's crime be the son's reproach the blot can never be wiped out by the most glorious actions; nay, if it lives to raise a family," said I, "the infamy must descend even to its innocent posterity."

He took the thought, and sometimes told me afterwards that it made a deeper impression on him than he discovered to me at that time; but for the present he put it off with telling me

If tears were in my eyes before, they now flowed too fast to be restrained, and I gave him but too much satisfaction by my looks that I had yet no reflections upon my mind strong enough to go that length, and that I could no more think of parting than he could.

He said a great many kind things, which were great, like himself; and, extenuating our crime, intimated to me that he could no more part with me than I could with him; so we both, as I may say, even against our light, and against our conviction, concluded to sin on; indeed, his affection to the child was one great tie to him, for he was extremely fond of it.

This child lived to be a considerable man. He was first an officer of the Garde du Corps of France, and afterwards colonel of a regiment of dragoons in Italy; and on many extraordinary occasions showed that he was not unworthy such a father, but many ways deserving a legitimate birth, and a better mother, of which hereafter.

I think I may say now that I lived indeed like a queen; or, if you will have me confess, that my condition had still the reproach of a whore; 1 may say I was, sure, the queen of whores; for no woman was ever more valued or more caressed by a person of such quality only in the station of a mistress. I had, indeed, one deficiency which women in such circumstances seldom are char geable; namely, I craved nothing of him. ! never asked him for anything in my life, nor suf fered myself to be made use of, as is too much the custom of mistresses, to ask favours for

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others. His bounty always prevented me in the
first, and my strict concealing myself in the last,
which was no less to my convenience than to

his.

The only favour I ever asked of him was for his gentleman, whom he had all along entrusted with the secret of our affair, and who once so much offended him by some omissions in his duty that found it very hard to make his peace. He came and laid his case before my woman Amy, and begged her to speak to me to intercede for him, which I did, and on my account he was received again and pardoned, for which the grateful dog requited me by getting to bed to his benefactress, Amy, at which I was very angry; but Amy generously acknowledged that it was her fault as much as his; that she loved the fellow so much that she believed if he had not asked her she should have asked him; I say this pacified me, and I only obtained of her that she should not let him know that I knew it.

I might have interspersed this part of my story with a great many pleasant parts and discourses which happened between my maid Amy and me, but I omit them on account of my own story, which has been so extraordinary. How ever, I must mention something as to Amy and her gentleman.

house, where he sometimes came, whether upon other amours or not was no business of mine to inquire. I knew nothing whither he intended to carry me; but when he was in the coach with me, he told me he had ordered his servant to go to court with me, and he would show me some of the beau monde. I told him I cared not where I went while I had the honour to have him with me; so he carried me to the fine palace of Meudon, where the Dauphin then was, and where he had some particular intimacy with one of the Dauphin's domestics, who procured a retreat for me in his lodgings while we stayed there, which was three or four days.

While I was there the king happened to come from Versailles, and, making but a short stay, visited Madame the Dauphiness, who was then living. The prince was here incognito, only because of his being with me, and, therefore, when he heard that the king was in the gardens, he kept close within the lodgings; but the gentleman in whose lodgings we were, with his lady and several others, went out to see the king, and I had the honour to be asked to go with them.

After we had seen the king, who did not stay long in the gardens, we walked up the broad terrace, and, crossing the hall towards the great stair-case, I had a sight which confounded me at I inquired of Amy upon what terms they came once, as I doubt not it would have done any woto be so intimate, but Amy seemed backward to man in the world. The horse guards, or, what explain herself. I did not care to press her upon they call there, the gens d'armes, had, upon some a question of that nature, knowing that she occasion, been either upon duty, or been remight have answered my question with a ques- viewed, or something (I did not understand that tion, and have said,—“ Why, how did you and part) was the matter, that occasioned their being the prince come to be so intimate?" so I left off there, I know not what; but, walking the guardfurther inquiring into it, till, after some time, she chamber, and with his jack-boots on, and the told it me all freely of her own accord, which, to whole habit of the troop, as it is worn when our cut it short, amounted to no more than this, that, horse guards are upon duty, as they call it, at St like mistress like maid, as they had many leisure || James's Park; I say, there, to my inexpressible hours together below, while they waited respec- confusion, I saw Mr ****, my first husband, the tively when his lord and I were together above; brewer. I say, they could hardly avoid the usual question one to another; namely, why might not they do the same thing below that we did above?

On that account, indeed, as I said above, I could not find in my heart to be angry with Amy. I was, indeed, afraid the girl would have been with child too, but that did not happen, and so there was no hurt done; for Amy had been hanselled before, as well as her mistress, and by the same party too, as you have heard.

I could not be deceived; I passed so near him that I almost brushed him with my clothes, and looked him full in the face; but, having my fan before my face, so that he could not know me. However, I knew him perfectly well, and I heard him speak, which was a second way of knowing him. Besides being, you may be sure, astonished and surprised at such a sight, I turned about after I had passed him some steps, and, pretending to ask the lady that was with me some questions, I stood as if I had viewed the Great Hall, the outer Guard Chamber, and some other things; but I did it to take a full view of his dress, that I might further inform myself.

While I stood thus amusing the lady that was with me with questions, he walked, talking with another man of the same cloth, back again, just by me; and to my particular satisfaction, or dissatisfaction, take it which way you will, I heard him speak English, the other being, it seems, an Englishman.

After I was up again, and my child provided with a good nurse, and, withal, winter coming on, it was proper to think of coming to Paris again, which I did; but as I had now a coach and horses, and some servants to attend me, by my lord's allowance, I took the liberty to have them come to Paris sometimes, and so to take a tour into the gardens of the Thuileries, and other pleasant places of the city. It happened one day that my prince (if I may call him so)|| had a mind to give me some diversion, and to take the air with me; but, that he might do it I then asked the lady some other questions: and not be publicly known, he comes to me in a "Pray, madam," says I, "what are these troopers coach of the Count de ***, a great officer of the here; are they the king's guards ?"-" No," says court, attended by his liveries also; so that, in a she, "they are the gens d'armes; a small detachword, it was impossible to guess by the equipagement of them, I suppose, attended the king towho I was, or whom I belonged to; also that I day, but they are not his Majesty's ordinary might be the more effectually concealed, he or-guard." Another lady that was with her said, dered me to be taken up at a mantua-maker's "No, madam, it seems that this is not the case;

for I heard them saying, the gens d'armes were here to-day by special order, some of them being to march towards the Rhine, and these attend for orders; but they go back to-morrow to Orleans, where they are expected."

This satisfied me in part, but I found means after this to inquire whose particular troop it was that the gentlemen that were here belonged to; and with that I heard they would all be at Paris the week after.

Two days after we returned for Paris, when I took occasion to speak to my lord, that I heard the gens d'armes were to be in the city the next week, and I should be charmed with seeing them march if they came in a body. He was so obliging in such things that I need but name a thing of that kind and it was done; so he ordered his gentleman (I should now call him him Amy's gentleman) to get me a place in a certain house where I might see them march.

As he did not appear with me on this occasion, so I had the liberty of taking my woman, Amy, with me, and stood where we were very well accommodated for the observation which I was to make. I told Amy what I had seen, and she was as forward to make the discovery as I was to have her, and almost as much surprised at the thing itself. In a word, the gens d'armes entered the city, as was expected, and made a most glorious show indeed, being new clothed and armed, and being to have their standards blessed by the Archbishop of Paris on this occasion, they indeed looked very gay; and as they marched very leisurely, I had time to take as critical a view, and make as nice a search among them as I pleased. Here, in a particular rank, eminent for one monstrous sized man on the right, here, I say, I saw my gentleman again, and a very handsome jolly fellow he was as any in the troop, though not so monstrous large as that great one I speak of who, it seems, was, however, a gentleman of a very good family in Gascoigne, and was called the giant of Gascoigne.

It was a kind of good fortune to us, among the other circumstances of it, that something caused the troop to halt in their march, a little before that particular rank came right against that window which I stood in, so that then we had occasion to take our full view of him, at a small distance, and so as not to doubt of his being the same person.

counts, venture with more safety to be particular Amy, who thought she might, on many acthan I could, asked her gentleman how a particular man, who she saw there among the gens d'armes might be inquired after and found out; she having seen an Englishman riding there who was supposed to be dead in England for several years before she came out of London, and that his wife had married again. It was a question the gentleman did not well understand how to answer; but another person that stood by told her if she would tell him the gentleman's name, he would endeavour to find him out for her, and asked her, jestingly, if he was her lover? Amy put that off with a laugh, but still continued her inquiry, and in such a manner as the gentleman easily perceived she was in earnest, for he left bantering, and asked her in which part of the troop he rode. She foolishly told him his name,

which she should not have done; and pointing to the cornet that troop carried, which was not then quite out of sight, she let him early know whereabouts he rode, only she could not name the captain. However, he gave her such direc tions afterwards that, in short, Amy, who was an indefatigable girl, found him out. In seems he had changed his name, not supposing any inquiry would be made after him here; but, I say, Amy found him out, and went boldly to his quarters, asked for him, and he came out to her immediately.

I believe I was not more confounded at my first seeing him at Meudon then he was at seeing Amy. He started and turned pale as death; Amy believed if he had seen her at first, in any convenient place for so villainous a purpose, would have murdered her.

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But he started, as I said before, and asked in English, with an admiration, "What are you?" "Sir," says she, "dont you know me?"—"Yes," says he, "I knew you when you were alive, but what you are now (whether ghost or substance) I know not."-" Be not afraid, sir, of that," says Amy, I am the same Amy that I was in your service, and do not speak to you now for any hurt, but that I saw you accidentally yesterday ride among the soldiers, I thought you might be glad to hear from your friends at London."

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Well, Amy," says he, "then (having a little recovered himself) how does everybody do? What is your mistress here?" Thus they began:

Amy. My mistress, sir, alas! Not the mistress you mean, poor gentlewoman, you left her in a sad condition.

Gent. Why that is true, Amy, but it could not be helped; I was in a sad condition myself.

Amy. I believe so, indeed, sir, or else you had not gone away as you did; for it was a very terrible condition you left them all in, that must say.

Gent. What did they do after I was gone? Amy. Do, sir! very miserably you may be sure; how could it be otherwise?

tell me, Amy, what became of them, if you please Gent. Well, that is true indeed; but you may for though I went so away, it was not because I did not love them all very well, but because! could not bear to see the poverty that was coming upon them, and which it was not in my power help; what could I do?

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heard my mistress say, many times, she did not Amy. Nay, I believe so, indeed, and I have doubt but your affliction was as great as her's. almost, wherever you were.

Gent. Why, did she believe I was alive, then? Amy. Yes, sir, she always said she believed you heard something of you had you been dead. were alive, because she thought she would have

Gent. Ay, ay, my perplexity was very great, indeed, or else I had never gone away.

Amy. It was very cruel though to the pour lady, sir, my mistress; she almost broke her heart for you at first, for fear of what might befal you, and at least because she could not hear from you.

Gent. Alas! Amy, what could I do? Things were driven to the last extremity before I went I could have done nothing but help to star

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