ides, she flattered herself with the hope that she should
not long survive the loss of this testimonial.

Our adventurer, with many professions of sorrow and mortification at his
own want of capacity to prevent such an alienation, undertook to dispose
of it to the best advantage, and to provide her with a cheap and retired
apartment, to which he would conduct her in safety, though at the hazard
of his life. In the meantime, however, he repaired to his friend
Renaldo, and, after having admonished him to arm his soul with patience
and philosophy, declared that Monimia's guilty passion for himself could
no longer be kept within bounds, that she had conjured him, in the most
pressing manner, to assist her in escaping from an house which she
considered as the worst of dungeons, because she was in it daily exposed
to the sight and company of a man whom she detested, and that she had
bribed him to compliance with her request, not only with repeated
promises of eternal love and submission, but also with the picture of her
father set with diamonds, which she had hitherto reserved as the last and
greatest testimony of her affection and esteem.

With these words he presented the fatal pledge to the eyes of the
astonished youth, upon whom it operated like the poisonous sight of the
basilisk, for in an instant, the whole passions of his soul were in the
most violent agitation. "What!" cried he, in an ecstasy of rage, "is she
so abandoned to perfidy, so lost to shame, so damned to constancy, to
gratitude, and virtuous love, as to meditate the means of leaving me
without decency, without remorse! to forsake me in my adversity, when my
hapless fortune can no longer flatter the pride and vanity of her
expectation! O woman! woman! woman! what simile shall I find to
illustrate the character of the sex? But I will not have recourse to
vain complaints and feeble exclamations. By Heaven! she shall not
'scape, she shall not triumph in her levity, she shall not exult in my
distress; no! I will rather sacrifice her to my just resentment, to the
injured powers of love and friendship. I will act the avenging minister
of Heaven! I will mangle that fair bosom, which contains so false a
heart! I will tear her to pieces, and scatter those beauteous limbs as a
prey to the beasts of the field, and the fowls of the air!"

Fathom, who expected this storm, far from attempting to oppose its
progress, waited with patience until its first violence