The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders

She gave me the like cue to the gentlewoman of the next house to that

which was on fire, and I did my endeavour to go, but by this time the

alarm of fire was so great, and so many engines playing, and the street

so thronged with people, that I could not get near the house whatever I

would do; so I came back again to my governess's, and taking the bundle

up into my chamber, I began to examine it. It is with horror that I

tell what a treasure I found there; 'tis enough to say, that besides

most of the family plate, which was considerable, I found a gold chain,

an old-fashioned thing, the locket of which was broken, so that I

suppose it had not been used some years, but the gold was not the worse

for that; also a little box of burying-rings, the lady's wedding-ring,

and some broken bits of old lockets of gold, a gold watch, and a purse

with about #24 value in old pieces of gold coin, and several other

things of value.

This was the greatest and the worst prize that ever I was concerned in;

for indeed, though, as I have said above, I was hardened now beyond the

power of all reflection in other cases, yet it really touched me to the

very soul when I looked into this treasure, to think of the poor

disconsolate gentlewoman who had lost so much by the fire besides; and

who would think, to be sure, that she had saved her plate and best

things; how she would be surprised and afflicted when she should find

that she had been deceived, and should find that the person that took

her children and her goods, had not come, as was pretended, from the

gentlewoman in the next street, but that the children had been put upon

her without her own knowledge.

I say, I confess the inhumanity of this action moved me very much, and

made me relent exceedingly, and tears stood in my eyes upon that

subject; but with all my sense of its being cruel and inhuman, I could

never find in my heart to make any restitution. The reflection wore

off, and I began quickly to forget the circumstances that attended the

taking them.

Nor was this all; for though by this job I was become considerably

richer than before, yet the resolution I had formerly taken, of leaving

off this horrid trade when I had gotten a little more, did not return,

but I must still get farther, and more; and the avarice joined so with

the success, that I had no more thought of coming to a timely

alteration of life, though without it I could expect no safety, no

tranquillity in the possession of what I had so wickedly gained; but a

little more, and a little more, was the case still.