appeared in its clearer
light and I have seen it in its own natural colours, when no more
blinded with the glittering appearances which at that time deluded me,
and as in like cases, if I may guess at others by myself, too much
possessed the mind; I say, since this I have often wondered with what
pleasure or satisfaction the prince could look upon the poor innocent
infant, which, though his own, and that he might that way have some
attachment in his affections to it, yet must always afterwards be a
remembrancer to him of his most early crime, and, which was worse, must
bear upon itself, unmerited, an eternal mark of infamy, which should be
spoken of, upon all occasions, to its reproach, from the folly of its
father and wickedness of its mother.

Great men are indeed delivered from the burthen of their natural
children, or bastards, as to their maintenance. This is the main
affliction in other cases, where there is not substance sufficient
without breaking into the fortunes of the family. In those cases either
a man's legitimate children suffer, which is very unnatural, or the
unfortunate mother of that illegitimate birth has a dreadful affliction,
either of being turned off with her child, and be left to starve, &c.,
or of seeing the poor infant packed off with a piece of money to those
she-butchers who take children off their hands, as 'tis called, that is
to say, starve them, and, in a word, murder them.

Great men, I say, are delivered from this burthen, because they are
always furnished to supply the expense of their out-of-the-way
offspring, by making little assignments upon the Bank of Lyons or the
townhouse of Paris, and settling those sums, to be received for the
maintenance of such expense as they see cause.

Thus, in the case of this child of mine, while he and I conversed, there
was no need to make any appointment as an appanage or maintenance for
the child or its nurse, for he supplied me more than sufficiently for
all those things; but afterwards, when time, and a particular
circumstance, put an end to our conversing together (as such things
always meet with a period, and generally break off abruptly), I say,
after that, I found he appointed the children a settled allowance, by an
assignment of annual rent upon the Bank of Lyons, which was sufficient
for bringing them handsomely, though privately, up in the world, and
that not in a manner unworthy of their father's blood, though I came to
be sunk and for