I was in such a state of maudlin misery by this, thanks to the wine I had already drunk, and my dubious speculation in regard to Cynthia, that I soon fell a-prey to Mr. Fielding's importuning. That lusty full-blooded fellow was not to be denied. As I accepted glass after glass of the insidious liquor from his hands, I felt my resolution weaken as of old, and that same sense of large content and utter heedlessness of the morrow steal upon me. As my brain grew hotter and heavier and less capable of thinking and doing, Cynthia's absence grew less poignant to it, and my own situation of the moment more perfectly acceptable. It was truly Elysian to sit in this warm room and in this mellow society, after having been without a roof to one's head and in such peril for so many hours. The sense of abandoning oneself by slow degrees and against one's proper judgment to this forbidden pleasure, was fraught with a delight that it is only in the power of the illicit to bestow. At the same time that I knew Mr. Fielding's point of view was specious and worthless, _vide_ the teachings of a bitter experience, I could hardly find it in my heart to resist his wit, the compliment of his good-fellowship, his whole-hearted gaiety. He was such a lovable spirit that he would have seduced the first of the Pharisees to hang with him at Tyburn, for the sake of the companionship. It would have taken sterner stuff than was ever in me to deny or resist him. It was not long before the justice was so overcome by the contents of his cellar that he drooped his head on the table and straightway fell fast asleep. Mr. Fielding, who was himself so seasoned that his face hardly shone as yet, laughed, and says with a kind of kingly pity: "What a penny-halfpenny haberdasher of a man it is! _C'est un vrai épicier_. Strip him of his paunch, his purse, and his knighthood, and there remains one who hath no more parts than a Presbyterian. If I were old Sir John, I would undertake to make a better man out of a cheese paring. It is a pretty behaviour in him, when we are sitting at this table, bearing ourselves so gallantly before his claret. But after all, I would prefer that his honour should speak with his nose rather than with his mouth. Both organs are equally witty; and we are under no obligation to answer his lustiest performances in that style."