m I supposed it would be of no consequence to him what became of me.

He lay in his lodgings that night, but went away early in the morning,
leaving me a letter in which he repeated all he had said, recommended
the care of the child, and desired of me that as he had remitted to me
the offer of a thousand pistoles which I would have given him for the
recompense of his charges and trouble with the Jew, and had given it me
back, so he desired I would allow him to oblige me to set apart that
thousand pistoles, with its improvement, for the child, and for its
education; earnestly pressing me to secure that little portion for the
abandoned orphan when I should think fit, as he was sure I would, to
throw away the rest upon something as worthless as my sincere friend at
Paris. He concluded with moving me to reflect, with the same regret as
he did, on our follies we had committed together; asked me forgiveness
for being the aggressor in the fact, and forgave me everything, he said,
but the cruelty of refusing him, which he owned he could not forgive me
so heartily as he should do, because he was satisfied it was an injury
to myself, would be an introduction to my ruin, and that I would
seriously repent of it. He foretold some fatal things which, he said, he
was well assured I should fall into, and that at last I would be ruined
by a bad husband; bid me be the more wary, that I might render him a
false prophet; but to remember that, if ever I came into distress, I had
a fast friend at Paris, who would not upbraid me with the unkind things
past, but would be always ready to return me good for evil.

This letter stunned me. I could not think it possible for any one that
had not dealt with the devil to write such a letter, for he spoke of
some particular things which afterwards were to befall me with such an
assurance that it frighted me beforehand; and when those things did come
to pass, I was persuaded he had some more than human knowledge. In a
word, his advices to me to repent were very affectionate, his warnings
of evil to happen to me were very kind, and his promises of assistance,
if I wanted him, were so generous that I have seldom seen the like; and
though I did not at first set much by that part because I looked upon
them as what might not happen, and as what was improbable to happen at
that time, yet all the rest of his letter was so moving that it left me
very melancholy, and I cried four-and-twenty hours after, almost wi