I took this opportunity of telling Pivet, that when he could get his wife in the humour, he might prevail on her to give an instrument, impowering my steward to receive the little income of her jointure at Ashby, which I would take care should be remitted to him; for, trifling as it was, it might be serviceable. When they were ready to set forward on' their journey, I begged leave to speak a few words to madam Pivet by herself. She seemed not inclined to the conference, but her husband very obligingly pressing her not to part with me in enmity, and at the same time quitting the room, she was obliged to hear me. I then very frankly asked her pardon for the lengths I had gone; telling her, that I hoped time, and her own good sense, would convince her that she was more obliged to me, than her passion would then give her leave to see. Remember, madam, I have kept my word with you. You are now married to a very deserving young man; you have a competent support during your life. Happiness is in your power if you do not wilfully cast it away from you. Shew now that greatness of mind of which you have so often boasted, by forgiving the man, who has, as you think, injured you; and resolving at once on a behaviour that shall, in your turn, intitle you, not only to the forgiveness, but even to the esteem, of those whom you have injured. I would have preached on, and given her more good advice, but she cut me short, with this decisive answer. Sir, I neither desire your counsel nor your good opinion; Mr Pivet _may_ deserve some regard from me, but _you_ I will never forgive, and she flung from me. I called in Pivet, and telling him I was infinitely pleased at the good disposition I found his lady in, I wished him all happiness and a safe journey, and they set out directly for Dijon. And now, my dear Bidulph, stop, to praise, to admire, to wonder at my virtue! I, who have had one of the finest women in England in my possession, for so many days (and by the way was not her aversion) to yield up her (by me) unpolluted charms to the arms of another! Add to this, that it has cost me more to make one woman honest, than it need have done to have made half a dozen--otherwise. I had like to have writ a strange ugly word, that was just at the nib of my pen. If you relate my story with the laudable partiality of a friend, judiciously abolishing the context (for which you may have many precedents), and neatly splicing together the useful fragments, shall I not appear to posterity as great as Scipio himself? Ah! Sir George, if we knew the secret springs of many of those actions which dazzle us, in the histories of the renowned heroes of old, it is not impossible but the wonderous page might dwindle into as insignificant a tale as mine is.