his fortitude to his
assistance, to remember his forefathers, and exert himself in the
imitation of their virtues, to fly from those bewitching charms which had
enslaved his better part, to retrieve his peace of mind by reflecting on
the inconstancy and ingratitude of woman, and amuse his imagination in
the pursuit of honour and glory.

After these admonitions he abused his ears with a forged detail of the
gradual advances made to him by Monimia, and the steps he had taken to
discourage her addresses, and re-establish her virtue, poisoning the mind
of that credulous youth to such a degree, that, in all probability, he
would have put a fatal period to his own existence, had not Fathom found
means to allay the rage of his ecstasy, by the cunning arrangement of
opposite considerations. He set his pride against his love, he opposed
his resentment to his sorrow, and his ambition to his despair.
Notwithstanding the balance of power so settled among these antagonists,
so violent were the shocks of their successive conflicts, that his bosom
fared like a wretched province, harassed, depopulated, and laid waste, by
two fierce contending armies. From this moment his life was nothing but
an alternation of starts and reveries; he wept and raved by turns,
according to the prevailing gust of passion; food became a stranger to
his lips, and sleep to his eyelids; he could not support the presence of
Monimia, her absence increased the torture of his pangs; and, when he met
her by accident, he started back with horror, like a traveller who
chances to tread upon a snake.

The poor afflicted orphan, worn to a shadow with self-consuming anguish,
eager to find some lowly retreat, where she could breath out her soul in
peace, and terrified at the frantic behaviour of Renaldo, communicated to
Fathom her desire of removing, and begged that he would take a small
picture of her father, decorated with diamonds, and convert them into
money, for the expense of her subsistence. This was the last pledge of
her family, which she had received from her mother, who had preserved it
in the midst of numberless distresses, and no other species of misery but
that which she groaned under could have prevailed upon the daughter to
part with it; but, exclusive of other motives, the very image itself, by
recalling to her mind the honours of her name, upbraided her with living
in dependence upon a man who had treated her with such indignity and
ingratitude; bes