Their strange emotion.
Then sighs that can no reason find,
Or used to make my reason blind:--
Her hands upon her breast entwined--
Ah, female charms!
Her face would lose its rosy hue
For lily's, washed in morning dew;
Aurora's purple blazed anew,
In love's alarms.

My suspicions finally became certainties, when a chambermaid brought to
me, one day, the following note:

"DEAREST KIKIDORIAN,--

"The feeling which I owe to my rank and high descent, and
the modesty natural to my sex, have until now hindered the
sparks of love which have long secretly burned in my bosom,
from breaking forth in open flame: but I am weary of the
combat, and my heart can no longer resist its bewitching
enemy. Have pity for a female, from whom only the utmost
degree of burning love could have been able to extort a
confession.

PTARNNSA."

I cannot describe how singularly I felt at this entirely unexpected
declaration of love: but as I held it far better to expose myself to
the revenge of a furious female, than to sin against the order of
nature, by a shameful intimacy with a creature that did not belong to my
race, I immediately wrote an answer in the following words:

"GRACIOUS LADY,--

"The constant favor his Excellency, your husband, has shown
to me; the undeserved benefits he has bestowed upon me; the
moral impossibility of fulfilling your gracious desires; and
many other reasons, that I will not name, move me to submit
to the anger of my gracious lady, rather than consent to an
action that would stigmatize me as the most ungrateful and
the lowest among all two-legged creatures. Besides, what is
desired of me, would be more bitter to satisfy than death
itself. This action, if I yielded to it, would effect the
ruin and dishonor of one of the most respected families in
the State, and my willingness would injure, before all
others, that person who has desired it. With the most solemn
and sincere assurances of gratitude I must here declare,
gracious lady, that under no circumstances can I fulfil your
wishes in this respect, although to all other commands I
promise a blind obedience.

KIKIDORIAN."

Underneath I wrote the following admonition:

"Think of this heavy sin;
Fly ere it be too late:
Shall vice, the pander, newly in