Here, however, under the wings of my sovereignly
belov'd, did I flow the most delicious hours of my life;
my Charles I had, and, in him, everything my fond heart
could wish or desire. He carried me to plays, operas,
masquerades, and every diversion of the town; all of which
pleas'd me indeed, but pleas'd me infinitely the more for
his being with me, and explaining everything to me, and
enjoying, perhaps, the natural impressions of surprize and
admiration, which such sights, at the first, never fail to
excite in a country girl, new to the delights of them; but
to me, they sensibly prov'd the power and full dominion of
the sole passion of my heart over me, a passion in which
soul and body were concentre'd, and left me no room for any
other relish of life but love.
As to the men I saw at those places, or at any other,
they suffer'd so much in the comparison my eyes made of
them with my all-perfect Adonis, that I had not the infidel-
ity even of one wandering thought to reproach myself with
upon his account. He was the universe to me, and all that
was not him was nothing to me.
My love, in fine, was so excessive, that it arriv'd at
annihilating every suggestion or kindling spark of jealousy;
for, one idea only tending that way, gave me such exquisite
torment that my self-love, and dread of worse than death,
made me for ever renounce and defy it: nor had I, indeed,
occasion; for, were I to enter here on the recital of sev-
eral instances wherein Charles sacrific'd to me women of
greater importance than I dare hint (which, considering his
form, was no such wonder), I might, indeed, give you full
proof of his unshaken constancy to me; but would not you
accuse me of warming up again a feast that my vanity ought
long ago to have been satisfy'd with?
In our cessations from active pleasure, Charles fram'd
himself one, in instructing me, as far as his own lights
reach'd, in a great many points of life that I was, in con-
sequence of my no-education, perfectly ignorant of: nor did
I suffer one word to fall in vain from the mouth of my love-
ly teacher: I hung on every syllable he utter'd, and re-
ceiv'd as oracles, all he said; whilst kisses were all the
interruption I could not refuse myself the pleasure of ad-
mitting, from lips that breath'd more than Arabian sweetness.
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