that you have forgiven me. I am young, and you say that I always relapse
into my faults; but cannot a young man like me, destitute of experience,
gain it also, break his promises, repent directly, and in time improve?
If you will forgive me yet once more, I will promise to offend you never
again. All the favour I ask of you is that we should live together like
husband and wife, to have but one bed and one board: if you are
inflexible, I shall never rise again from here. I entreat you, tell me
your decision: God alone knows what I suffer, and that because I occupy
myself with you only, because I love and adore only you. If I have
offended you sometimes, you must bear the reproach; for when someone
offends me, if it were granted me to complain to you, I should not
confide my griefs to others; but when we are on bad terms, I am obliged
to keep them to myself, and that maddens me.'

"He then urged me strongly to stay with him and lodge in his house; but I
excused myself, and replied that he ought to be purged, and that he could
not be, conveniently, at Glasgow; then he told me that he knew I had
brought a letter for him, but that he would have preferred to make the
journey with me. He believed, I think, that I meant to send him to some
prison: I replied that I should take him to Craigmiller, that he would
find doctors there, that I should remain near him, and that we should be
within reach of seeing my son. He has answered that he will go where I
wish to take him, provided that I grant him what he has asked. He does
not, however, wish to be seen by anyone.

"He has told me more than a hundred pretty things that I cannot repeat to
you, and at which you yourself would be surprised: he did not want to let
me go; he wanted to make me sit up with him all night. As for me, I
pretended to believe everything, and I seemed to interest myself really
in him. Besides, I have never seen him so small and humble; and if I had