The History and Remarkable Life of the Truly Honourable Colonel Jacque, Commonly Called Colonel JackDefoe, Daniel
General
The History and Remarkable Life of the Truly Honourable Colonel Jacque, Commonly Called Colonel Jack
Defoe, Daniel
Adventure stories, English; England -- Social life and customs -- 18th century -- Fiction; Picaresque fiction
All this while I had no sufficient evidence of her guilt, neither had I
so much as charged her with it or let her know I suspected her,
otherwise than as she might perceive it in my conduct, and in the
change of my behaviour to her, which was such that she could not but
perceive that something troubled me. Yet she took no notice of it to
me, but received me very well, and showed herself to be glad of my
return. Nor did I find she had been extravagant in her expenses while I
was abroad. But jealousy, as the wise man says, is the wrath of a man;
her being so good a hussy at what money I had left her gave my
distempered fancy an opinion that she had been maintained by other
people, and so had had no occasion to spend.
I must confess she had a difficult point here upon her, though she had
been really honest; for, as my head was prepossessed of her dishonesty,
if she had been lavish I should have said she had spent it upon her
gentlemen; and as she had been frugal, I said she had been maintained
by them. Thus, I say, my head was distempered; I believed myself
abused, and nothing could put it out of my thoughts night or day.
All this while it was not visibly broken out between us; but I was so
fully possessed with the belief of it that I seemed to want no
evidence, and I looked with an evil eye upon everybody that came near
her or that she conversed with. There was an officer of the Guards du
Corps that lodged in the same house with us, a very honest gentleman
and a man of quality. I happened to be in a little drawing-room
adjoining to a parlour where my wife sat at that time, and this
gentleman came into the parlour, which, as he was one of the family, he
might have done without offence; but he, not knowing that I was in the
drawing-room, sat down and talked with my wife. I heard every word they
said, for the door between us was open; nor could I say that there
passed anything between them but cursory discourse. They talked of
casual things, of a young lady, a burgher’s daughter of nineteen, that
had been married the week before to an advocate in the Parliament of
Paris, vastly rich, and about sixty-three; and of another, a widow lady
of fortune in Paris, that had married her deceased husband’s _valet de
chamber_; and of such casual matters, that I could find no fault with
her now at all.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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