under one of the characters commonly assumed upon
such occasions. Here being by my circumstances
condemned to solitude, I passed most of my hours
in bitterness and anguish. The conversation of the
people with whom I was placed was not at all capable
of engaging my attention, or dispossessing the
reigning ideas. The books which I carried to my
retreat were such as heightened my abhorrence of
myself; for I was not so far abandoned as to sink
voluntarily into corruption, or endeavour to conceal
from my own mind the enormity of my crime.

My relation remitted none of his fondness, but
visited me so often, that I was sometimes afraid
lest his assiduity should expose him to suspicion.
Whenever he came he found me weeping, and was
therefore less delightfully entertained than he
expected. After frequent expostulations upon the
unreasonableness of my sorrow, and innumerable
protestations of everlasting regard, he at last found
that I was more affected with the loss of my
innocence, than the danger of my fame, and that he
might not be disturbed by my remorse, began to
lull my conscience with the opiates of irreligion.
His arguments were such as my course of life has
since exposed me often to the necessity of hearing,
vulgar, empty, and fallacious; yet they at first
confounded me by their novelty, filled me with doubt
and perplexity, and interrupted that peace which I
began to feel from the sincerity of my repentance,