It may perhaps be wondered at, that the waiting-woman herself was
not the messenger employed on this occasion; but we are sorry to say
she was not at present qualified for that, or indeed for any other
office. The rum (for so the landlord chose to call the distillation
from malt) had basely taken the advantage of the fatigue which the
poor woman had undergone, and had made terrible depredations on her
noble faculties, at a time when they were very unable to resist the
attack.
We shall not describe this tragical scene too fully; but we
thought ourselves obliged, by that historic integrity which we
profess, shortly to hint a matter which we would otherwise have been
glad to have spared. Many historians, indeed, for want of this
integrity, or of diligence, to say no worse, often leave the reader to
find out these little circumstances in the dark, and sometimes to
his great confusion and perplexity.
Sophia was very soon eased of her causeless fright by the entry of
the noble peer, who was not only an intimate acquaintance of Mrs.
Fitzpatrick, but in reality a very particular friend of that lady.
To say truth, it was by his assistance that she had been enabled to
escape from her husband; for this nobleman had the same gallant
disposition with those renowned knights of whom we read in heroic
story, and had delivered many an imprisoned nymph from durance. He was
indeed as bitter an enemy to the savage authority too often
exercised by husbands and fathers, over the young and lovely of the
other sex, as ever knighterrant was to the barbarous power of
enchanters; nay, to say truth, I have often suspected that those
very enchanters with which romance everywhere abounds, were in reality
no other than the husbands of those days; and matrimony itself was,
perhaps, the enchanted castle in which the nymphs were said to be
confined.
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