Читать книгу Love Potions Through the Ages: A Study of Amatory Devices and Mores онлайн

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When Chrysis found I had read the reproach, “This is the custom, sir,” said she, “and chiefly of this city, where the women are skill’d in magick-charms, enough to make the moon confess their power, therefore the recovery of any useful instrument of love becomes their care; ’tis only writing some soft tender things to my lady, and you make her happy in a kind return. For ’tis confest, since her disappointment, she has not been her self.”

I readily consented, and calling for paper, thus addrest myself:

“’Tis confest, madam, I have often sinned, for I’m not only a man, but a very young one, yet never left the field so dishonorably before. You have at your feet a confessing criminal, that deserves whatever you inflict: I have cut a throat, betray’d my country, committed sacrilege; if a punishment for any of these will serve, I am ready to receive sentence. If you fancy my death, I wait you with my sword; but if a beating will content you, I fly naked to your arms. Only remember, that ’twas not the workman, but his instruments that fail’d: I was ready to engage, but wanted arms. Who rob’d me of them I know not; perhaps my eager mind outrun my body; or while with an unhappy haste I aim’d at all; I was cheated with abortive joys. I only know I don’t know what I’ve done: You bid me fear a palsie, as if the disease you’d do greater that has already rob’d me of that, by which I shou’d have purchas’d you. All I have to say for my self, is this, that I will certainly pay with interest the arrears of love, if you allow me time to repair my misfortune.”