this enraged lover determined to seize me next night as I returned
to my lodgings from a friend's house that I frequented: with this
view, he waited in the street, attended by two of his companions,
to whom he had imparted his design of carrying me down to the river,
in which proposed to have me heartily ducked, notwithstanding the
severity of the weather, it being then about the middle of December.
But this stratagem did not succeed; for, being apprised of their
ambush, I got home another way, and by the help of my landlord's
apprentice, discharged a volley from the garret window, which did
great execution upon them, and next day occasioned so much mirth
at their expense that they found themselves under a necessity of
leaving the town, until the adventure should be entirely forgotten.

My cousins (though twice baffled in their expectation) did not,
however, desist from persecuting me, who had now enraged them beyond
a possibility of forgiveness by detecting their malice and preventing
its effects: neither should I have found them more humane, had I
patiently submitted to their rancour, and borne without murmuring
the rigour of their unreasonable hate; for I have found by experience,
that though small favours may be acknowledged and slight injuries
atoned, there is no wretch so ungrateful as he whom you have most
generously obliged, and no enemy so implacable as those who have done
you the greatest wrong. These good-natured creatures, therefore,
had recourse to a scheme which conspired with a piece of bad news
I soon after received, to give them all the satisfaction they desired:
this plan was to debauch the faith of my companion and confidant,
who betrayed the trust I reposed in him, by imparting to them the
particulars of my small amours, which they published with such
exaggerations that I suffered very much in the opinion of everybody,
and was utterly discarded by the dear creatures whose names had