The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders

It must be observed that when the old wretch my brother (husband) was

dead, I then freely gave my husband an account of all that affair, and

of this cousin, as I had called him before, being my own son by that

mistaken unhappy match. He was perfectly easy in the account, and told

me he should have been as easy if the old man, as we called him, had

been alive. 'For,' said he, 'it was no fault of yours, nor of his; it

was a mistake impossible to be prevented.' He only reproached him with

desiring me to conceal it, and to live with him as a wife, after I knew

that he was my brother; that, he said, was a vile part. Thus all these

difficulties were made easy, and we lived together with the greatest

kindness and comfort imaginable.

We are grown old; I am come back to England, being almost seventy years

of age, husband sixty-eight, having performed much more than the

limited terms of my transportation; and now, notwithstanding all the

fatigues and all the miseries we have both gone through, we are both of

us in good heart and health. My husband remained there some time after

me to settle our affairs, and at first I had intended to go back to

him, but at his desire I altered that resolution, and he is come over

to England also, where we resolve to spend the remainder of our years

in sincere penitence for the wicked lives we have lived.

WRITTEN IN THE YEAR 1683