Instead of this- what a picture am I about to draw!- Alas! why
should I anticipate the miseries I have endured? The reader will
have but too much of the melancholy subject.
BOOK II
[1728-1731]
HOWEVER mournful the moment which suggested flight, it did not
seem more terrible than that wherein I put my design in execution
appeared delightful. To leave my relations, my resources, while yet
a child, in the midst of my apprenticeship, before I had learned
enough of my business to obtain a subsistence; to run on inevitable
misery and danger: to expose myself in that age of weakness and
innocence to all the temptations of vice and despair; to set out in
search of errors, misfortunes, snares, slavery, and death; to endure
more intolerable evils than those I meant to shun, was the picture I
should have drawn, the natural consequence of my hazardous enterprise.
How different was the idea I entertained of it!- The independence I
seemed to possess was the sole object of my contemplation; having
obtained my liberty, I thought everything attainable: I entered with
confidence on the vast theater of the world, which my merit was to
captivate: at every step I expected to find amusements, treasures, and
adventures: friends ready to serve, and mistresses eager to please me;
I had but to show myself, and the whole universe would be interested
in my concerns; not but I could have been content with something less;
a charming society, with sufficient means, might have satisfied me.
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