ng it would
be the highest ungenerosity to quit the convent, without acknowledging
the favours he had received there, he wrote a letter to the abbess,
full of gratitude and civility, telling her, that tho' the necessity
of his affairs required he should take an eternal leave of that place,
he should always preserve the memory of those honours he had received
in it.--To Elgidia he wrote in much the same strain she had done to
him, and concluded with desiring her to believe it was to Heaven alone
he could resign her. Those letters he sent by his man, and ordered him
to leave them with the portress, to avoid any answers which might have
drawn him into a longer correspondence than he desired, or perhaps
even have occasioned a revival of those inclinations in him, which he
was now convinced of the folly and danger of.

This was the first proof he gave of a firmness of resolution, and was
indeed as great a one as could have been expected from a man of the
age he was:--it must be owned, that at that time love is the strongest
passion of the soul, and as neither Elgidia nor the abbess wanted
charms to inspire it, and he had been but too sensible of the force of
both, to be able, I say, to tear himself away in the manner he now
did, was a piece of heroism, which I with every one in the like
circumstance may have power to imitate.

He hired another horse and guide, that he might not lose his way a
second time, and departed the same day for the baron's, where he was
received by that young nobleman with the utmost kindness as well as
politeness, and found so much in his conversation, and those who came
to visit him, and the continual amusements of that place, as made him
soon forget all he had partook in the monastery:--he remained there
while the baron stayed, and then came with him to Paris.

On his return he frequented the same company, and pursued the same
pleasures he had done before; but as nothing extraordinary befel him,
I shall not enter into particulars, my design being only to relate
such adventures as gave an opportunity for the passions to exert
themselves in influencing the conduct of his life.

CHAP. II.

The pleasures of travelling described, and the improvement a
sensible mind may receive from it: with some hints to the
censorious, not to be too severe on errors, the circumstances of
which they are ignorant of, occasioned by a remarkable instance of
an involuntary slip of nature.

Of all t