"Sir," said she, "I believe you to be a gentleman, and willing to ease the longings of a young virgin. If my face will go down with you, that, and the rest of my body, are at your service. You know well enough what it is to love, and therefore will have a compassion, I hope, on one that languishes under that distemper."

The gentleman, without further ado, took her at her word, and was so courteous as to play the priest, since she was so willing to be the sacrifice. He soon eased her of that burden she complained of, and owned that he never received more pleasure in his life.

The kisses of married women are generally insipid; the kisses of mercenary harlots are fallacious and deceitful; but those of an innocent, uninstructed virgin are sincere, and consequently the most delicious.

Our lovers had* like to have fainted away under the violence of their agitation; their souls kept hovering about their mouths, but their uninterrupted kisses denied them a passage. While the golden minutes passed away in these transports, the mistress, who was seized with a fit of jealousy to see them stay so long, stole softly into the room, and surprised them in very criminal circumstances. The unhappy maid found the first effects of her indignation, whom she thumped and beat, and dragged by the hair. But the poor wench entreated her to consider, that though her ill stars had sent her a slave into the world, which was none of her fault, she had as strong inclinations as the best of her sex; that love was an imperious deity; and when he had once got entrance into a heart, would not throw up his possession, as she herself could not but know by experience.

"Wherefore, Madame," says she, "in consideration of love, who is our common master, and whose yoke both of us carry, be pleased to forgive this indiscretion in me; which, after the worst gloss you can put upon it, was only the effect of a foolish curiosity, from which the best of women are not exempt."