ence above-mentioned; but unluckily, one of
the company having been bred to physic, urged permission to see her,
in order to prescribe some recipe for her ailment.--Natura was now
extremely at a loss what to do, till the minister, who never wanted an
expedient, relieved him, by telling the doctor, that his neice had
been accustomed to these kind of fits from her infancy, that it was
only silence and repose which recovered her, which being now gone to
take, any interruption would be of more prejudice than benefit.

This passed very well, and no farther mention was made of her; but the
accident occasioned the company to take leave much sooner than
otherwise they would have done, very much to the ease of Natura, who
had been in the most intolerable constraint, to behave so as to
conceal the truth, and longed to be alone, to give a loose to the
distracting passions of his soul.

The more he ruminated on the wrongs he had sustained, the more
difficult he found it to preserve that moderation the minister had
enjoined, and he had promised: he had long but too much reason to
believe his wife was false; but the thought that she had entered into
a criminal conversation with his own brother, rendered the guilt
doubly odious in them both.--Had not his own eyes convinced him of the
horrid truth, he could have given credit to no other testimony, that a
brother, whom he had always treated with the utmost affection, and
whose fortune it had been his care to promote, should have dared to
harbour even the most distant wish of dishonouring his wife. He
seemed, in his eyes, the most culpable of the two, and thought the
banishment intended for him much too small a punishment for so
atrocious a crime. It is certain that this young gentleman had not
only broke through the bands of duty, honour, gratitude, and every
social obligation, but had also sinned against nature itself, by
adding incest to adultery.--Natura could not indeed consider him as
any thing but a monster, and that as such he ought to be cut off from
the face of the earth; and neither reason nor humanity, could alledge
any thing against the dictates of a revenge, which by the most
unconcerned and disinterested person could not be called
unjust.--Strongly did its emotions work within his soul, and he was
more than once on the point of going in search of him, in order to
satiate its most impatient thirst, but was as often restrained, by
reflecting on the consequences.--'Suppose,