When we passed the streets, she was often charmed with
some trinket in the toy-shops; and from moderate desires of seals and
snuff-boxes, rose, by degrees, to gold and diamonds. I now began to find
the smile of Charybdis too costly for a private purse, and added one
more to six and forty lovers, whose fortune and patience her rapacity
had exhausted.
Imperia then took possession of my affections; but kept them only for a
short time. She had newly inherited a large fortune, and having spent
the early part of her life in the perusal of romances, brought with her
into the gay world all the pride of Cleopatra; expected nothing less
than vows, altars, and sacrifices; and thought her charms dishonoured,
and her power infringed, by the softest opposition to her sentiments, or
the smallest transgression of her commands. Time might indeed cure this
species of pride in a mind not naturally undiscerning, and vitiated only
by false representations; but the operations of time are slow; and I
therefore left her to grow wise at leisure, or to continue in errour at
her own expense.
Thus I have hitherto, in spite of myself, passed my life in frozen
celibacy. My friends, indeed, often tell me, that I flatter my
imagination with higher hopes than human nature can gratify; that I
dress up an ideal charmer in all the radiance of perfection, and then
enter the world to look for the same excellence in corporeal beauty.
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