 Book 9, Chapter 11 of the Female Quixote, Vol. 2. The Female Quixote, Vol. 2, by Charlotte Lennox. Book 9, Chapter 11. Being in the author's opinion, the best chapter in this history. A good divine who had the cure of Arabella's mind greatly at heart, no sooner perceived that the health of her body was almost restored, and that he might talk to her without the fear of any inconvenience, than he introduced the subject of her throwing herself into the river, which he had before lightly touched upon, and still declared himself dissatisfied with. Arabella now more disposed to defend this point than when languishing under the pressure of pain and dejection of mind, endeavored by arguments founded upon romantic heroism to prove that it was not only reasonable and just, but also great and glorious, and exactly conformable to the rules of heroic virtue. The doctor listened to her with a mixed emotion between pity, reverence, and amazement, and though in the performance of his office he had been accustomed to accommodate his notions to every understanding, and had therefore accumulated a great variety of topics and illustrations, yet he found himself now engaged in a controversy for which he was not so well prepared as he imagined, and was at a loss for some leading principle by which he might introduce his reasonings and begin his confutation. Though he saw much to praise in her discourse, he was afraid of confirming her obstinacy by commendation, and though he also found much to blame, he dreaded to give pain to a delicacy he revered, perceiving, however, that Arabella was silent as if expecting his reply, he resolved not to bring upon himself the guilt of abandoning her to her mistake, and the necessity of speaking forced him to find something to say. Though it is not easy, madam, said he, for anyone that has the honour of conversing with your ladyship to preserve his attention free to any other idea than such as your discourse tends immediately to impress, yet I have not been able, while you were speaking, to refrain from some very mortifying reflections on the imperfection of all human happiness, and the uncertain consequences of all those advantages which we think ourselves not only at liberty to desire, but obligated to cultivate. Though I have known some dangers and distresses, replied Arabella gravely, yet I did not imagine myself a mirror of calamity as could not be seen without concern. If my life has not been eminently fortunate, it has yet escaped the great evils of persecution, captivity, shipwrecks, and dangers to which many ladies far more illustrious, both by birth and merit than myself, have been exposed. And indeed, though I have sometimes raised envy, or possibly incurred hatred, yet I have no reason to believe I was ever beheld with pity before. The doctor saw he had not introduced his discourse in the most acceptable manner, but it was too late to repent. Let me not, madam, said he, be censured before I have fully explained my sentiments. That you have been envied I can readily believe. For who that gives way to natural passions has not reason to envy the lady Arabella. But that you have been hated I am indeed less willing to think, though I know how easily the greater part of mankind hate those by whom they are excelled. If the misery of my condition, replied Arabella, has been able to excite that melancholy your first words seem to imply, flattery will contribute very little towards the improvement of it. Nor do I expect from the severity of the sacerdotal character any of those praises which I hear perhaps with too much pleasure from the rest of the world. Having been so lately on the brink of that state, in which all distinctions but that of goodness are destroyed, I have not recovered so much levity but that I would yet rather hear instructions than compliments. If therefore you have observed in me any dangerous tenets, corrupt passions, or criminal desires, I conjure you discover me to myself. Let no false civility restrain your admonitions. Let me know this evil which can strike a good man with horror, and which I dread the more as I do not feel it. I cannot suppose that a man of your order would be alarmed at any other misery than guilt. Nor will I think so meanly of him whose direction I have entreated, as to imagine he can think virtue unhappy, however overwhelmed by disasters or repression. Keep me therefore no longer in suspense. I expect you will exert the authority of your function, and I promise you on my part, sincerity and submission. The good man was now completely embarrassed. He saw his meaning mistaken, but was afraid to explain it, lest he should seem to pay court by a cowardly retraction. He therefore paused a little, and Arabella supposed he was studying for such expressions as might convey censure without offense. Sir, said she, if you are not yet satisfied of my willingness to hear your reproofs, let me evince my desolation by entreating you to consider yourself as dispensed from all ceremony upon this occasion. Your imaginations, madam, replied the doctor, are too quick for language. You conjecture too soon what you do not wait to hear, and reason upon suppositions which cannot be allowed you. When I mentioned my reflections upon human misery, I was far from concluding your ladieship miserable, compared with the rest of mankind. And though contemplating the abstracted idea of possible felicity, I thought that even you might be produced as an instance that is not attainable in this world. I did not impute the imperfection of your state to wickedness, but intended to observe that though even virtue be added to external advantages, there will yet be something wanting to happiness. Whoever sees you, madam, will immediately say that nothing can hinder you from being the happiest of mortals, but want of power to understand your own advantages. And whoever is admitted to your conversation will be convinced that you enjoy all that intellectual excellence can confer. Yet I see you harassed with innumerable terrors and perplexities which never disturbed the peace of poverty or ignorance. I cannot discover, said Erebella, how poverty or ignorance can be privileged from casualty or violence, from the ravisher, the robber, or the enemy. I should hope rather that if wealth and knowledge can give nothing else, they at least confer judgment to foresee danger and power to oppose it. They are not indeed, returns the doctor, secured against real misfortunes, but they are happily defended from wild imaginations. They do not suspect what cannot happen, nor figure ravishers at a distance and leap into rivers to escape them. Do you suppose, then, said Erebella, that I was frighted without cause? It is certain, madam, replied he, that no injury was intended you. Disingenuity, sir, said Erebella, does not become a clergyman. I think too well of your understanding to imagine your fallacy deceives yourself. Why then should you hope that it will deceive me? The laws of conference require that the terms of the question and answer be the same. I ask, if I had not cause to be frighted, why then am I answered that no injury was intended? Human beings cannot penetrate intentions, nor regulate their conduct, but by exterior appearances, and surely there was sufficient appearance of intended injury, and that the greatest which my sex can suffer. Why, madam, said the doctor, should you still persist in so wild an assertion? A coarse epithet, said Erebella, is no confutation. It rests upon you to show that in giving way to my fears, even supposing them groundless, I departed from the character of a reasonable person. I am afraid, replied the doctor, of a dispute with your ladyship, not because I think myself in danger of defeat, but because being accustomed to speak to scholars with scholastic ruggedness, I may perhaps depart in the heat of argument, from that respect to which you have so great a right, and give offence to a person I am really afraid to displease. But if you will promise to excuse my ardor, I will endeavor to prove that you have been frighted without reason. I should be content, replied Erebella, to obtain truth upon harder terms, and therefore entreat you to begin. The apprehension of any future evil, madam, said the divine, which is called terror, when the danger is from natural causes, and suspicion when it precedes from a moral agent, must always arise from comparison. We can judge of the future only by the past, and have therefore only reason to fear or suspect when we see the same causes in motion which have formerly produced mischief, or the same measures taken as have before been preparatory to a crime. Thus, when the sailor in certain latitudes sees the clouds rise, experience bids him expect a storm. When any monarch levies armies, his neighbors prepare to repel an invasion. This power of prognostication may, by reading and conversation, be extended beyond our own knowledge, and the great use of books is that of participating without labour or hazard the experience of others. But upon this principle how can you find any reason for your late fright? Has it ever been known that a lady of your rank was attacked with such intentions, in a place so public, without any preparations made by the violator for defence or escape? Can it be imagined that any man would so rashly expose himself to infamy by failure, and to the gibbet by success? Does there in the records of the world appear a single instance of such hopeless villainy? It is now time, sir, said Arabella, to answer your questions, before they are too many to be remembered. The dignity of my birth can very little defend me against an insult to which the heiresses of great and powerful empires, the daughters of valiant princes, and the wives of renowned monarchs, have been a thousand times exposed. The danger which you think so great would hardly repel a determined mind, for in effect who would have attempted my rescue, seeing that no knight or valiant cavalier was within view. What then should have hindered him from placing me in a chariot, driving it into the pathless desert, and emeering me in a castle among woods and mountains, or hiding me perhaps in the caverns of a rock, or confining me in some island of an immense lake? From all this, madam, interrupted the clergyman, he is hindered by impossibility. He cannot carry you to any of these dreadful places, because there is no such castle, desert, cavern, or lake. You will pardon me, sir, said Arabella, if I recur to your own principles. You allow that experience may be gained by books, and certainly there is no part of knowledge in which we are obliged to trust them more than in descriptive geography. The most restless activity in the longest life can survey but a small part of the habitable globe, and the rest can only be known from the report of others. Universal negatives are seldom safe, and are least to be allowed when the disputes are about objects of sense, where one position cannot be inferred from another. But there is a castle any man who has seen it may safely affirm, but you cannot with equal reason maintain that there is no castle because you have not seen it. Why should I imagine that the face of the earth is altered since the time of those heroines who experienced so many changes of uncouth captivity? Castles indeed are the works of art, and there are therefore subject to decay, but lakes and caverns and deserts must always remain, and why, since you call for instances, should I not dread the misfortunes which happened to the divine Clalia, who was carried to one of the isles of the Thrasumenian lake, or those which befell the beautiful Candice, Queen of Ethiopia, whom the pirate Xenodorus wandered with on the seas, or the accidents which embittered the life of the incomparable Cleopatra, or the persecutions which made that of the fair Elisa miserable, or, in fine, the various distresses of many other fair and virtuous princesses, such as those which happened to Olympia, Bellamira, Parasatis, Baranis, Amalagantha, Agione, Albicinda, Placidia, Arsinoe, Deidamia, and a thousand others I could mention. To the names of many of these illustrious sufferers, I am an absolute stranger, replied the doctor. The rest I faintly remember some mention of in those contemptible volumes, with which children are sometimes injudiciously suffered to amuse their imaginations, but which I little expected to hear quoted by your ladyship in a serious discourse. And though I am very far from catching occasions of resentment, yet I think myself at liberty to observe, that if I merited your censure for one indelicate epithet, we have engaged on very unequal terms, if I may not likewise complain of such contemptuous ridicule as you are pleased to exercise upon my opinions by opposing them with the authority of scribblers, not only of fictions, but of senseless fictions, which at once vitiate the mind and pervert the understanding, and which, if they are at any time read with safety, owe their innocence only to their absurdity. From these books, sir, said Arabella, which you condemn with so much ardour, though you acknowledge yourself little acquainted with them, I have learned not to recede from the conditions I have granted, and shall not therefore censure the license of your language, which glances from the books upon the readers. These books, sir, thus corrupt, thus absurd, thus dangerous elect to the intellect and morals I have read, and that I hope without injury to my judgment or my virtue. The doctor, whose vehemence had hindered him from discovering all the consequences of his position, now found himself entangled and replied in a submissive tone. I confess, madam, my words imply an accusation very remote from my intention. It has always been the rule of my life not to justify any words or actions because they are mine. I am ashamed of my negligence. I am sorry for my warmth, and entreat your ladieship to pardon a fault which I hope never to repeat. The reparation, sir, said Arabella, smiling, overbalances the offence, and by thus daring to own you have been in the wrong. You have raised in me a much higher esteem for you, yet I will not pardon you, added she, without enjoining you a penance for the fault you own you have committed, and this penance shall be to prove, first, that these histories you condemn are fictions, next, that they are absurd, and lastly, that they are criminal. The doctor was pleased to find a reconciliation offered upon so very easy terms, with the person whom he beheld at once with reverence and affection, and could not offend without extreme regret. He therefore answered with a very cheerful composure, to prove those narratives to be fictions, madam, is only difficult because the position is almost too evident for proof. Your ladieship knows, I suppose, to what authors these writings are ascribed. To the French wits of the last century, said Arabella, and at what distance, madam, are the facts related in them from the age of the writer? I was never exact in my computation, replied Arabella, but I think most of the events happened about two thousand years ago. How then, madam, resumed the doctor, could these events be so minutely known to writers so far remote from the time in which they happened? By records, monuments, memoirs, and histories, answered the lady. But by what accident, then, said the doctor, smiling, did it happen these records and monuments were kept universally secret to mankind till the last century? What brought all the memoirs of the remotest nations and earliest ages only to France? Where were they hidden that none could consult them but a few obscure authors, and wither are they now vanished again that they can be found no more? Arabella, having sat silent a while, told him that she found his questions very difficult to be answered, and that though perhaps the authors themselves could have told whence they borrowed their materials, she should not at present require any other evidence of the first assertion, but allowed him to suppose them fictions and required now that he should show them to be absurd. Your ladyship, returned he, has, I find, too much understanding to struggle against demonstration and too much veracity to deny your convictions. Therefore some of the arguments by which I intended to show the falset of these narratives may now be used to prove their absurdity. You grant them, madam, to be fictions. Sir, interrupted Arabella eagerly, you are again infringing the laws of disputation. You are not to confound a supposition of which I allow you only the present use, with an unlimited and irrevocable concession. I am too well acquainted with my own weakness to conclude an opinion false, merely because I find myself unable to defend it. But I am in haste to hear the proof of the other positions, not only because they may perhaps supply what is deficient in your evidence of the first, but because I think it of more importance to detect corruption and fiction, though indeed falsehood is a species of corruption, and what falsehood is more hateful than the falsehood of history. Since you have drawn me back, madam, to the first question, returned the doctor, let me know what arguments your ladyship can produce for the veracity of these books, that there are many objections against it you yourself have allowed, and the highest moral evidence of falsehood appears when there are many arguments against an assertion and none for it. Sir, replied Arabella, I shall never think that any narrative which is not computed by its own absurdity is without one argument at least on its side. There is a love of truth in the human mind, if not naturally implanted, so easily obtained from reason and experience that I should expect it universally to prevail where there is no strong temptation to deceit. We hate to be deceived. We therefore hate those that deceive us. We desire not to be hated, and therefore know that we are not to deceive. Show me an equal motive to falsehood, or confess that every relation has some right to credit. This may be allowed, madam, said the doctor, when we claim to be credited, but that seems not to be the hope or intention of these writers. Surely, sir, replied Arabella, you must mistake their design. He that writes without intention to be credited must write to little purpose, for what pleasure or advantage can arise from facts that never happened? What examples can be afforded by the patience of those who never suffered, or the chastity of those who were never solicited? The great end of history is to show how much human nature can endure or perform. When we hear a story in common life that raises our wonder or compassion, the first confrontation stills our emotions, and however we were touched before, we then chase it from the memory with contempt as a trifle, or with indignation as an imposture. Prove, therefore, that the books which I have hitherto read as copies of life and models of conduct are empty fictions, and from this hour I deliver them to moths and mold, and from this time consider their authors as wretches who cheated me of those hours I ought to have dedicated to application and improvement, and betrayed me to a waste of those years in which I might have laid up knowledge for my future life. Shakespeare, said the doctor, calls just resentment the child of integrity, and therefore I do not wonder that what vehemence the gentleness of your ladyship's temper allows should be exerted upon this occasion. Yet though I cannot forgive these authors for having destroyed so much valuable time, yet I cannot think them intentionally culpable, because I cannot believe they expected to be credited. Truth is not always injured by fiction. An admirable writer of our own time has found the way to convey the most solid instructions, the noblest sentiments, and the most exalted piety in the pleasing dress of a novel, and to use the words of the greatest genius in the present age, has taught the passions to move at the command of virtue. The fables of Esop, though never I supposed believed, yet have been long considered as lectures of moral and domestic wisdom, so well adapted to the faculties of man that they have been received by all civilized nations, and the Arabs themselves have honoured his translator with the appellation of Lukman the Wise. The fables of Esop, said Arabella, are among those of which the absurdity discovers itself, and the truth is comprised in the application, but what can be said of those tales which are told with the solemn air of historical truth, and if false convey no instruction? That they cannot be defended, madam, said the doctor, it is my purpose to prove, and if to evince their falsehood be sufficient to procure their banishment from your ladyship's closet, their day of grace is near an end. How is any oral or written testimony confuted or confirmed? By comparing it, says the lady, with the testimony of others, or with the natural effects and standing evidence of the facts related, and sometimes by comparing it with itself. If then your ladyship will abide by this last, returned he, and compare these books with ancient histories, you will not only find innumerable names of which no mention was ever made before, but persons who lived in different ages engaged as the friends or rivals of each other. You will perceive that your authors have parceled out the world at discretion, erected palaces, and established monarchies, wherever the convenience of their narrative required them, and set kings and queens over imaginary nations. Nor have they considered themselves as invested with less authority over the works of nature than the institutions of men, for they have distributed mountains and deserts, gulfs and rocks, wherever they wanted them, and whenever the course of their story required an expedient, raised a gloomy forest or overflowed the regions with a rapid stream. I suppose, said Arabella, you have no intention to deceive me, and since, if what you have asserted be true, the cause is undefensible, I shall trouble you no longer to argue on this topic, but desire now to hear why, supposing them fictions, and intended to be received as fictions, you censure them as absurd. The only excellence of falsehood, answered he, is its resemblance to truth. As therefore any narrative is more liable to be confuted by its inconsistency with known facts, it is at a greater distance from the perfection of fiction, for there can be no difficulty in framing a tale if we are left at liberty to invert all history and nature for our own convenience. When a crime is to be concealed, it is easy to cover it with an imaginary word. When virtue is to be rewarded, a nation with a new name may, without any expense of invention, raise her to the throne. When Ariosto was told of the magnificence of his palaces, he answered that the cost of poetical architecture was very little, and still less is the cost of building without art than without materials. But their historical failures may be easily passed over when we consider their physical or philosophical absurdities. To bring men together from different countries does not shock with every inherent or demonstrable absurdity, and therefore when we read only for amusement, such improprieties may be born. But who can forbear to throw away the story that gives to one man the strength of thousands that puts life or death in a smile or frown? That recounts labours and sufferings to which the powers of humanity are utterly unequal, that disfigures the whole appearance of the world and represents everything in a form different from that which experience has shown. It is the fault of the best fictions that they teach young minds to expect strange adventures and sudden vicissitudes, and therefore encourage them often to trust a chance. A long life may be passed without a single occurrence that can cause much surprise, or produce any unexpected consequence of great importance. The order of the world is so established that all human affairs proceed in a regular method, and very little opportunity is left for sallies or hazards, for assault or rescue, but the brave and the coward, the sprightly and the dull, suffer themselves to be carried alike down the stream of custom. Arabella, who had for some time listened with a wish to interrupt him, now took advantage of a short pause. I cannot imagine, sir, said she, that you intend to deceive me, and therefore I am inclined to believe that you are yourself mistaken, and that your application to learning has hindered you from that acquaintance with the world in which these authors excelled. I have not long conversed in public, yet I have found that life is subject to many accidents. Do you count my late escape for nothing? Is it to be numbered among daily and cursory transactions that a woman flies from a ravisher into a rapid stream? You must not, madam, said the doctor, urge as an argument the fact which is at present the subject of dispute. Arabella blushing at the absurdity she had been guilty of, and not attempting any subterfuge or excuse, the doctor found himself at liberty to proceed. You must not imagine, madam, continued he, that I intend to irrigate any superiority when I observe that your ladieship must suffer me to decide, in some measure authoritatively, whether life is truly described in those books. The likeness of a picture can only be determined by a knowledge of the original. You have yet had little opportunity of knowing the ways of mankind which cannot be learned but from experience, and of which the highest understanding and the lowest must enter the world in equal ignorance. I have lived long in a public character, and have thought it my duty to study those whom I have undertaken to admonish or instruct. I have never been so rich as to affright men into disguise and concealment, nor so poor as to be kept at a distance to great for accurate observation. I therefore presume to tell your ladieship with great confidence that your writers have instituted a world of their own, and that nothing is more different from a human being than heroes or heroines. I am afraid, sir, said Arabella, that the difference is not in favour of the present world. That, madam, answered he, your own penetration will enable you to judge when it shall have made you equally acquainted with both. I have no desire to determine a question, the solution of which gives so little pleasure to purity and benevolence. The silence of a man who loves to praise is a censure sufficiently severe, said the lady. May it never happen that you should be unwilling to mention the name of Arabella. I hope wherever corruption prevails in the world to live in it with virtue, or if I find myself too much endangered to retire from it with innocence. But if you can say so little in commendation of mankind, how will you prove these histories to be vicious, which if they do not describe real life, give us an idea of a better race of beings than now inhabit the world? It is of little importance, madam, replied the doctor, to decide whether in the real or fictitious life most wickedness is to be found. Books ought to supply an antidote to example, and if we retire to a contemplation of crimes, and continue in our closets to inflame our passions, at what time must we rectify our words, or purify our hearts? The immediate tendency of these books, which your ladyship must allow me to mention with some severity, is to give new fire to the passions of revenge and love, to passions which, even without such powerful auxiliaries, it is one of the severest labours of reason and piety to suppress, and which yet must be suppressed if we hope to be approved in the sight of the only being where approbation can make us happy. I am afraid your ladyship will think me too serious. I have already learned too much from you, said Arabella, to presume to instruct you, yet suffer me to caution you never to dishonour your sacred office by the lowliness of apologies. Then let me again observe, resume T, that these books soften the heart to love and harden it to murder, that they teach women to exact vengeance and men to execute it, teach women to expect not only worship, but the dreadful worship of human sacrifices. Every page of these volumes is filled with such extravagance of praise and expressions of obedience as one human being ought not to hear from another, or with accounts of battles in which thousands are slaughtered for no other purpose than to gain a smile from the haughty beauty, who fits a calm spectatris of the ruin and desolation, bloodshed and misery incited by herself. It is impossible to read these tales without lessening part of that humanity, which by preserving in us a sense of our alliance with all human nature keeps us awake to tenderness and sympathy, or without impairing that compassion which is implanted in us as an incentive to acts of kindness. If there be any preserved by natural softness or early education from learning pride and cruelty, they are yet in danger of being betrayed to the vanity of beauty and taught the arts of intrigue. Love, madam, is, you know, the business, the sole business of ladies in romances. Arabella's blushes now hindered him from proceeding as he had intended. I perceive, continued he, that my arguments begin to be less agreeable to your ladyship's delicacy. I shall therefore insist no longer upon false tenderness of sentiment, but proceed to those outrages of the violent passions which, though not more dangerous, are more generally hateful. It is not necessary, sir, interrupted Arabella, that you strengthen by any new proof a position which, when calmly considered, cannot be denied. My heart yields to the force of truth, and I now wonder how the blaze of enthusiastic bravery could hinder me from remarking with abhorrence the crime of deliberate unnecessary bloodshed. I begin to perceive that I have hitherto at least trifled away my time, and fear that I have already made some approaches to the crime of encouraging violence and revenge. I hope, madam, said the good man with horror in his looks, that no life was ever lost by your incitement. Arabella, seeing him thus moved, burst into tears and could not immediately answer. Is it possible, cried the doctor, that such gentleness and elegance should be stained with blood? Be not too hasty in your censure, said Arabella, recovering herself. I tremble indeed to think how nearly I have approached the brink of murder when I thought myself only consulting my own glory. But whatever I suffer, I will never more demand or instigate vengeance, nor consider my punctilios as important enough to be balanced against life. The doctor confirmed her in her new resolutions, and thinking solitude was necessary to compose her spirits after the fatigue of so long a conversation, he retired to acquaint Mr. Glanville with his success, who, in the transport of his joy, was almost ready to throw himself at his feet to thank him for the miracle, as he called it, that he had performed. End of Book 9, Chapter 11, reading by Jesse Noar. Book 9, Chapter 12 of the Female Quixote, Volume 2. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Female Quixote, Volume 2, by Charlotte Lennox. Book 9, Chapter 12, in which the history is concluded. Mr. Glanville, who fancied to himself the most ravishing delight from conversing with this lovely cousin, now recovered to the free use of all her noble powers of reason, would have paid her a visit that afternoon, had not a moment's reflection, convinced him that now was the time when her mind was laboring under the force of conviction to introduce a repentant Sir George to her, who, by confessing the ridiculous farce he had invented to deceive her, might restore him to her good opinion and add to the doctor's solid arguments the poignant sting of ridicule, which she would then perceive she had incurred. Sir George being now able to leave his chamber and the Arabella well enough recovered to admit a visit in hers, Mr. Glanville entreated his father to wait on her and get permission for Sir George to attend her upon a business of some consequence. Sir Charles Norsuna mentioned this request than Arabella, after a little hesitation, complied with it. As she had been kept a stranger to all the particulars of Mr. Glanville's quarrels with the young Baronet, her thoughts were a little perplexed concerning the occasion of this visit and her embarrassment was considerably increased by the confusion which she perceived in the countenance of Sir George. It was not without some tokens of the painfully suppressed reluctance that Sir George consented to perform his promise when Mr. Glanville claimed it. But the disadvantages that would attend his breach of it dejected and humbled as he now was presenting themselves in a forcible manner to his imagination confirmed his wavering resolutions. And since he found himself obliged to be his own accuser, he entered her to do it with the best grace he could. Acknowledging therefore to Lady Bella all the artifices her deception by romances had given him encouragement to use upon her and explaining very explicitly the last with relation to the pretended princes of Gaul, he submissively asked her pardon for the offence it would now give her as well as for the trouble it had formally. Arabella struck with inconceivable confusion having only bowed her head to his apology, desired to be left alone and continued to hear two hours afterwards wholly absorbed in the most disagreeable reflections on the absurdity of her past behavior and the contempt and ridicule to which she now saw plainly she had exposed herself. The violence of these first emotions having at length subsided she sent for Sir Charles and Mr. Glanville and having with a noble ingenuity expatiated upon the follies her vitiated judgment had led her into. She apologized to the first for the frequent causes she had given him of uneasiness and turning to Mr. Glanville whom she beheld with a look of mingled tenderness and modesty to give you myself with all my remaining imperfections is making you but a poor present in return for the obligations your generous affection has laid me under to you yet since I'm so happy as to be desired for a partner for life by a man of your sense and honor I will endeavor to make myself as worthy as I am able of such a favorable distinction. Mr. Glanville kissed the hand she gave him with an emphatic silence while Sir Charles in the most obliging manner imaginable thanked her for the honor she conferred both on himself and son by this alliance. Sir George entangled in his own artifices saw himself under a necessity of confirming the promises he had made to Miss Glanville during his fit of penitence and was accordingly married to that young lady at the same time that Mr. Glanville and Arabella were united. We choose, reader, to express this circumstance though the same in different words as well to avoid repetition as to intimate that the first mentioned pair were indeed only married in the common acceptation of the world that is, they were privileged to join fortunes, equipages, titles and expense while Mr. Glanville and Arabella were united as well in these as in every virtue and laudable affection of the mind. The End End of Book 9, Chapter 12 End of The Female Quixote Volume 2 by Charlotte Lennox