Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress. Даниэль ДефоЧитать онлайн книгу.
tears to run down my cheeks. "My dear," says he aloud, "what mean these tears?" "My lord," said I after some little check, for I could not speak presently, "I beseech you to believe me, they are not tears of sorrow but tears of joy. It is impossible for me to see myself snatched from the misery I was fallen into and at once to be in the arms of a Prince of such goodness, such immense bounty, and be treated in such a manner--'tis not possible, my lord," said I, "to contain the satisfaction of it, and it will break out in an excess in some measure proportioned to your immense bounty and to the affection which Your Highness treats me with, who am so infinitely below you."
It would look a little too much like a romance here to repeat all the kind things he said to me on that occasion, but I can't omit one passage. As he saw the tears drop down my cheek, he pulls out a fine cambric handkerchief and was going to wipe the tears off, but checked his hand as if he was afraid to deface something. I say he checked his hand, and tossed the handkerchief to me to do it myself. I took the hint immediately, and with a kind of pleasant disdain, "How! my lord," said I, "have you kissed me so often and don't you know whether I am painted or not? Pray let Your Highness satisfy yourself that you have no cheats put upon you; for once let me be vain enough to say I have not deceived you with false colours." With this I put a handkerchief into his hand and, taking his hand into mine, I made him wipe my face so hard that he was unwilling to do it for fear of hurting me.
He appeared surprised more than ever, and swore, which was the first time that I had heard him swear from my first knowing him, that he could not have believed there was any such skin, without paint, in the world. "Well, my lord," said I, "Your Highness shall have a further demonstration than this--as to that which you are pleased to accept for beauty, that it is the mere work of nature." And with that I stepped to the door, and rang a little bell for my woman Amy and bade her bring me a cupful of hot water, which she did. And when it was come I desired His Highness to feel if it was warm, which he did, and I immediately washed my face all over with it before him. This was indeed more than satisfaction, that is to say, than believing, for it was an undeniable demonstration, and he kissed my cheeks and breasts a thousand times with expressions of the greatest surprise imaginable.
Nor was I a very indifferent figure as to shape. Though I had had two children by my gentleman and five by my true husband, I say I was no despisable shape. And my Prince (I must be allowed the vanity to call him so) was taking his view of me as I walked from one end of the room to the other. At last he leads me to the darkest part of the room and, standing behind me, bade me hold up my head, when putting both his hands round my neck, as if he was spanning my neck to see how small it was, for it was long and small, he held my neck so long and so hard in his hands that I complained he hurt me a little. What he did it for I knew not, nor had I the least suspicion but that he was spanning my neck. But when I said he hurt me, he seemed to let go, and in half a minute more led me to a pier-glass, and behold I saw my neck clasped with a fine necklace of diamonds whereas I felt no more what he was doing at all than if he had really done nothing at all, nor did I suspect it in the least. If I had an ounce of blood in me that did not fly up into my face, neck, and breasts, it must be from some interruption in the vessels. I was all on fire with the sight, and began to wonder what it was that was coming to me.
However, to let him see that I was not unqualified to receive benefits, I turned about: "My lord," says I, "Your Highness is resolved to conquer by your bounty the very gratitude of your servants; you will leave no room for anything but thanks, and make those thanks useless too by their bearing no proportion to the occasion."
"I love, child," says he, "to see everything suitable: a fine gown and petticoat, a fine laced head. A fine face and neck and no necklace would not have made the object perfect. But why that blush, my dear?" says the Prince. "My lord," said I, "all your gifts call for blushes, but above all I blush to receive what I am so ill able to merit, and may become so ill also."
Thus far I am a standing mark of the weakness of great men in their vice, that value not squandering away immense wealth upon the most worthless creatures; or, to sum it up in a word, they raise the value of the object which they pretend to pitch upon by their fancy--I say, raise the value of it at their own expense, give vast presents for a ruinous favour which is so far from being equal to the price, that nothing will at last prove more absurd than the cost men are at to purchase their own destruction.
I could not, in the height of all this fine doing, I say I could not be without some just reflection, though conscience was, as I said, dumb as to any disturbance it gave me in my wickedness. My vanity was fed up to such a height that I had no room to give way to such reflections.
But I could not but sometimes look back with astonishment at the folly of men of quality, who, immense in their bounty as in their wealth, give, to a profusion and without bounds, to the most scandalous of our sex for granting them the liberty of abusing themselves and ruining both.
I that knew what this carcase of mine had been but a few years before, how overwhelmed with grief, drowned in tears, frighted with the prospect of beggary, and surrounded with rags and fatherless children; that was pawning and selling the rags that covered me, for a dinner, and sat on the ground, despairing of help and expecting to be starved, till my children were snatched from me to be kept by the parish--I that was after this a whore for bread and, abandoning conscience and virtue, lived with another woman's husband; I that was despised by all my relations and my husband's too; I that was left so entirely desolate, friendless, and helpless that I knew not how to get the least help to keep me from starving--that I should be caressed by a prince for the honour of having the scandalous use of my prostituted body, common before to his inferiors, and perhaps would not have denied one of his footmen but a little while before if I could have got my bread by it.
I say I could not but reflect upon the brutality and blindness of mankind, that, because nature had given me a good skin and some agreeable features, should suffer that beauty to be such a bait for appetite as to do such sordid, unaccountable things to obtain the possession of it.
It is for this reason that I have so largely set down the particulars of the caresses I was treated with by the jeweller, and also by this Prince; not to make the story an incentive to the vice, which I am now such a sorrowful penitent for being guilty of--God forbid any should make so vile a use of so good a design--but to draw the just picture of a man enslaved to the rage of his vicious appetite: how he defaces the image of God in his soul, dethrones his reason, causes conscience to abdicate the possession, and exalts sense into the vacant throne; how he deposes the man and exalts the brute.
Oh, could we hear now the reproaches this great man afterwards loaded himself with when he grew weary of this admired creature and became sick of his vice, how profitable would the report of them be to the reader of this story. But had he himself also known the dirty history of my actings upon the stage of life that little time I had been in the world, how much more severe would those reproaches have been upon himself. But I shall come to this again.
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