Daniel Defoe

“ And with these absurdities I kept conscience from giving me any considerable disturbance in all this matter, and I was as perfectly easy as to the lawfulness of it as if I had been married to the Prince and had had no other husband. So possible is it for us to roll ourselves up in wickedness, till we grow invulnerable by conscience; and that sentinel, once dozed, sleeps fast, not to be awakened while the tide of pleasure continues to flow or till something dark and dreadful brings us to ourselves again. ”

“ Thus far I am a standing mark of the weakness of great men in their vice, that value not squandering away immense wealth upon the most worthless creatures; or, to sum it up in a word, they raise the value of the object which they pretend to pitch upon by their fancy—I say, raise the value of it at their own expense, give vast presents for a ruinous favour which is so far from being equal to the price, that nothing will at last prove more absurd than the cost men are at to purchase their own destruction. ”

“ Never woman in such a station lived a fortnight in so complete a fullness of human delight. For, to have the entire possession of one of the most accomplished princes in the world, and of the politest, best-bred man, to converse with him all day and, as he professed, charm him all night, what could be more inexpressibly pleasing, and especially to a woman of a vast deal of pride as I was? ”

“ I have, I confess, wondered at the stupidity that my intellectual part was under all that while, what lethargic fumes dozed the soul, and how it was possible that I, who in the case before, where the temptation was many ways more forcible and the arguments stronger and more irresistible, was yet under a continued inquietude on account of the wicked life I led, could now live in the most profound tranquillity, and with an uninterrupted peace, nay, even rising up to satisfaction and joy, and yet in a more palpable state of adultery than before ”

“ On the contrary, I was mistress of ten thousand pounds before the Prince did anything for me. Had I been mistress of my resolution, had I been less obliging and rejected the first attack, all had been safe; but my virtue was lost before, and the devil, who had found the way to break in upon me by one temptation, easily mastered me now by another, and I gave myself up to a person who, though a man of high dignity, was yet the most tempting and obliging that ever I met with in my life. ”

“ However, to let him see that I was not unqualified to receive benefits, I turned about: “My lord,” says I, “Your Highness is resolved to conquer by your bounty the very gratitude of your servants; you will leave no room for anything but thanks, and make those thanks useless too by their bearing no proportion to the occasion.”
“I love, child,” says he, “to see everything suitable: a fine gown and petticoat, a fine laced head. A fine face and neck and no necklace would not have made the object perfect. But why that blush, my dear?” says the Prince. ”

“ I say I could not but reflect upon the brutality and blindness of mankind, that, because nature had given me a good skin and some agreeable features, should suffer that beauty to be such a bait for appetite as to do such sordid, unaccountable things to obtain the possession of it. ”

“ But, he said, my house was the most convenient that could possibly be found in all Paris for an amour, especially for him, having a way out into three streets, and not overlooked by any neighbours, so that he could pass and repass without observation, for one of the back ways opened into a narrow dark alley, which alley was a thoroughfare or passage out of one street into another, and any person that went in or out by the door had no more to do but to see that there was nobody following him in the alley before he went in at the door. ”

“ I could not, in the height of all this fine doing, I say I could not be without some just reflection, though conscience was, as I said, dumb as to any disturbance it gave me in my wickedness. My vanity was fed up to such a height that I had no room to give way to such reflections. ”

“ I hesitated much at consenting at first asking, but the Prince told me princes did not court like other men, that they brought more powerful arguments, and he very prettily added that they were sooner repulsed than other men and ought to be sooner complied with, intimating, though very genteelly, that after a woman had positively refused him once, he could not, like other men, wait with importunities and stratagems and laying long sieges ”

“ For you are to note that the people of Paris, especially the women, are the most busy and impertinent enquirers into the conduct of their neighbours, especially that of a single woman, that are in the world ”

“ This was too just to oppose, and I made no scruple to tell His Highness that since he had stooped so low as to make me his own, he ought to have all the satisfaction in the world that I was all his own; that I would take all the measures he should please to direct me to avoid the impertinent attacks of others ”