As for me, my business was his money, and what I could make of him; and
after that, if I could have found out any way to have done it, I would
have sent him safe home to his house and to his family, for 'twas ten
to one but he had an honest, virtuous wife and innocent children, that
were anxious for his safety, and would have been glad to have gotten
him home, and have taken care of him till he was restored to himself.
And then with what shame and regret would he look back upon himself!
how would he reproach himself with associating himself with a whore!
picked up in the worst of all holes, the cloister, among the dirt and
filth of all the town! how would he be trembling for fear he had got
the pox, for fear a dart had struck through his liver, and hate himself
every time he looked back upon the madness and brutality of his
debauch! how would he, if he had any principles of honour, as I verily
believe he had--I say, how would he abhor the thought of giving any ill
distemper, if he had it, as for aught he knew he might, to his modest
and virtuous wife, and thereby sowing the contagion in the life-blood
of his posterity.
Would such gentlemen but consider the contemptible thoughts which the
very women they are concerned with, in such cases as these, have of
them, it would be a surfeit to them. As I said above, they value not
the pleasure, they are raised by no inclination to the man, the passive
jade thinks of no pleasure but the money; and when he is, as it were,
drunk in the ecstasies of his wicked pleasure, her hands are in his
pockets searching for what she can find there, and of which he can no
more be sensible in the moment of his folly that he can forethink of it
when he goes about it.
I knew a woman that was so dexterous with a fellow, who indeed deserved
no better usage, that while he was busy with her another way, conveyed
his purse with twenty guineas in it out of his fob-pocket, where he had
put it for fear of her, and put another purse with gilded counters in
it into the room of it. After he had done, he says to her, 'Now han't
you picked my pocket?' She jested with him, and told him she supposed
he had not much to lose; he put his hand to his fob, and with his
fingers felt that his purse was there, which fully satisfied him, and
so she brought off his money. And this was a trade with her; she kept
a sham gold watch, that is, a watch of silver gilt, and a purse of
counters in her pocket to be ready on all such occasions, and I doubt
not practiced it with success.