have abused the confidence and generosity of
my patron; I have defrauded his family, under the mask of sincerity and
attachment; I have taken the most cruel and base advantages of virtue in
distress; I have seduced unsuspecting innocence to ruin and despair; I
have violated the most sacred trust reposed in me by my friend and
benefactor; I have betrayed his love, torn his noble heart asunder, by
means of the most perfidious slander and false insinuations; and,
finally, brought to an untimely grave the fairest pattern of human beauty
and perfection. Shall the author of these crimes pass with impunity?
Shall he hope to prosper in the midst of such enormous guilt? It were an
imputation upon Providence to suppose it! Ah, no! I begin to feel myself
overtaken by the eternal justice of Heaven! I totter on the edge of
wretchedness and woe, without one friendly hand to save me from the
terrible abyss!"

These reflections, which, perhaps, the misery of his fellow-creatures
would never have inspired, had he himself remained without the verge of
misfortune, were now produced from the sensation of his own calamities;
and, for the first time, his cheeks were bedewed with the drops of
penitence and sorrow. "Contraries," saith Plato, "are productive of each
other." Reformation is oftentimes generated from unsuccessful vice; and
our adventurer was, at this juncture, very well disposed to turn over a
new leaf in consequence of those salutary suggestions; though he was far
from being cured beyond the possibility of a relapse. On the contrary,
all the faculties of his soul were so well adapted, and had been so long
habituated to deceit, that, in order to extricate himself from the evils
that environed him, he would not, in all probability, have scrupled to
practise it upon his own father, had a convenient opportunity occurred.

Be that as it may, he certainly, after a tedious and fruitless exercise
of his invention, resolved to effect a clandestine retreat from that
confederacy of enemies which he could not withstand, and once more join
his fortune to that of Renaldo, whom he proposed to serve, for the
future, with fidelity and affection, thereby endeavouring to atone for
the treachery of his former conduct. Thus determined, he packed up his
necessaries in a portmanteau, attempted to amuse his creditors with
promises of speedy payment, and, venturing to come forth in the dark,
took a place in the Canterbury stage-coach, after havin