most criminal. Whatever wise and good examples he might find in the
family where he had the honour to reside, it is certain that the French
court, during the regency of the Duke of Orleans, was one of the most
dissolute under heaven. What, by a wretched abuse of language, have been
called intrigues of love and gallantry, were so entirely to the major's
then degenerate taste, that if not the whole business, at least the whole
happiness of his life, consisted in them; and he had now too much leisure
for one who was so prone to abuse it. His fine constitution, than which
perhaps there was hardly ever a better, gave him great opportunities of
indulging himself in these excesses; and his good spirits enabled him to
pursue his pleasures of every kind in so alert and sprightly a manner,
that multitudes envied him, and called him, by a dreadful kind of
compliment, "the happy rake."




CHAPTER IV.

CHECKS OF CONSCIENCE.


Yet still the checks of conscience, and some remaining principles of so
good an education, would break in upon his most licentious hours; and
I particularly remember he told me, that when some of his dissolute
companions were once congratulating him on his distinguished felicity, a
dog happening at that time to come into the room, he could not forbear
groaning inwardly, and saying to himself, 'Oh that I were that dog!' Such
then was his happiness; and such perhaps is that of hundreds more who
bear themselves highest in the contempt of religion, and glory in