Clarissa Harlowe; or the history of a young lady — Volume 7 by Samuel Richardson
page 54 of 413 (13%)
page 54 of 413 (13%)
![]() | ![]() |
|
she avoided. Her watchfulness rendered more plots abortive than those
which contributed to her fall; and they were many and various. And all her greater trials and hardships were owing to her noble resistance and just resentment. 'I know, proceeded I, how much I condemn myself in the justice I am doing to this excellent creature. But yet I will do her justice, and cannot help it if I would. And I hope this shows that I am not so totally abandoned as I have been thought to be. 'Indeed, with me, she has done more honour to her sex in her fall, if it be to be called a fall, (in truth it ought not,) than ever any other could do in her standing. 'When, at length, I had given her watchful virtue cause of suspicion, I was then indeed obliged to make use of power and art to prevent her escaping from me. She then formed contrivances to elude mine; but all her's were such as strict truth and punctilious honour would justify. She could not stoop to deceit and falsehood, no, not to save herself. More than once justly did she tell me, fired by conscious worthiness, that her soul was my soul's superior!--Forgive me, Ladies, for saying, that till I knew her, I questioned a soul in a sex, created, as I was willing to suppose, only for temporary purposes.--It is not to be imagined into what absurdities men of free principle run in order to justify to themselves their free practices; and to make a religion to their minds: and yet, in this respect, I have not been so faulty as some others. 'No wonder that such a noble creature as this looked upon every studied artifice as a degree of baseness not to be forgiven: no wonder that she |
|