First, she told me a long story of his being hurt by a wild boar, and of the condition he was reduced to, so that every one expected he should die, the anguish of the wound having thrown him into a fever, with abundance of circumstances too long to relate here; how he recovered of that extreme danger, but continued very weak; how the gentleman had been homme de parole, and had sent back the courier as punctually as if it had been to the king; that he had given a long account of his lord, and of his illness and recovery; but the sum of the matter, as to me, was, that as to the lady, his lord was turned penitent, was under some vows for his recovery, and could not think any more on that affair; and especially, the lady being gone, and that it had not been offered to her, so there was no breach of honour; but that his lord was sensible of the good offices of Mrs Amy, and had sent her the fifty pistoles for her trouble, as if she had really gone the journey.
I was, I confess, hardly able to bear the first surprise of this disappointment. Amy saw it, and gapes out (as was her way) 'Lawd, madam, never be concerned at it; you see he is gotten among the priests, and I suppose they have saucily imposed some penance upon him, and, it may be, sent him of an errand barefoot, to some Madonna, or Notredame, or other; and he is off of his amours for the present. I'll warrant you he'll be as wicked again as ever he was when he is got thorough well, and gets but out of their hands again. I hate this out-o'-season repentance. What occasion had he, in his repentance, to be off of taking a good wife? I should have been glad to see you have been a princess, and all that; but if it can't be, never afflict yourself; you are rich enough to be a princess to yourself; you don't want him, that's the best of it.'
Well, I cried for all that, and was heartily vexed, and that a great while; but, as Amy was always at my elbow, and always jogging it out of my head with her mirth and her wit, it wore off again.
Then I told Amy all the story of my merchant, and how he had found me out when I was in such a concern to find him; how it was true that he lodged in St Laurence Pountney's Lane; and how I had had all the story of his misfortune, which she had heard of, in which he had lost above £8000 sterling; and that he had told me frankly of it before she had sent me any account of it, or at least before I had taken any notice that I had heard of it.
Amy was very joyful at that part. 'Well, madam, then', says Amy, what need you value the story of the prince, and going I know not whither into Germany, to lay your bones in another world, and learn the devil's language, called High Dutch? You are better here by half, says Amy. 'Lawd, madam! 'says she; 'why, are you not as rich as Crœsus?'
Well, it was a great while still before I could bring myself off of this fancied sovereignty; and I, that was so willing once to be mistress to a king, was now ten thousand times more fond of being wife to a prince.
So fast a hold has pride and ambition upon our minds, that when once it gets admission, nothing is so chimerical but, under this possession, we can form ideas of in our fancy, and realize to our imagination. Nothing can be so ridiculous as the simple steps we take in such cases; a man or a woman becomes a mere malade imaginaire, and, I believe, may as easily die with grief, or run mad with joy (as the affair in his fancy appears right or wrong) as if all was real, and actually under the management of the person.
