It is one of the misfortunes of the professional Don Juan
that his honour forbids him to refuse battle; he is in life
like the Roman soldier upon duty, or like the sworn physician
who must attend on all diseases. Burns accepted the
provocation; hungry hope reawakened in his heart; here was a
girl - pretty, simple at least, if not honestly stupid, and
plainly not averse to his attentions: it seemed to him once
more as if love might here be waiting him. Had he but known
the truth! for this facile and empty-headed girl had nothing
more in view than a flirtation; and her heart, from the first
and on to the end of her story, was engaged by another man.
Burns once more commenced the celebrated process of
"battering himself into a warm affection;" and the proofs of
his success are to be found in many verses of the period.
Nor did he succeed with himself only; Jean, with her heart
still elsewhere, succumbed to his fascination, and early in
the next year the natural consequence became manifest. It
was a heavy stroke for this unfortunate couple. They had
trifled with life, and were now rudely reminded of life's
serious issues. Jean awoke to the ruin of her hopes; the
best she had now to expect was marriage with a man who was a
stranger to her dearest thoughts; she might now be glad if
she could get what she would never have chosen. As for
Burns, at the stroke of the calamity he recognised that his
voyage of discovery had led him into a wrong hemisphere -
that he was not, and never had been, really in love with
Jean. Hear him in the pressure of the hour. "Against two
things," he writes, "I am as fixed as fate - staying at home,
and owning her conjugally. The first, by heaven, I will not
do! - the last, by hell, I will never do!" And then he adds,