ABSTRACT
The first woman who in this career fixed my regard was a finished coquette, by which epithet I understand a woman whose ruling passion is her vanity, and whose invention is hourly on the rack for means of gratifying it. She was a lady of high rank, and married to a person of great figure at court. I first obtained her attention under favour of the epithet by which the Parisian belles thought proper to distinguish me, of the handsome Englishman. Sir Charles, my introducer, was certainly of more established vogue than myself, and in this respect might have seemed a conquest still more flattering to a person of her character. But the Marchioness easily discerned that he would have afforded her less occupation and amusement. Sir Charles would perhaps have equalled me in constancy and perseverance; but he had a calmness of temper in affairs of this sort, which to her tastes would have been intolerable. Obedient, obsequious, / patient of injuries, he would undoubtedly have shown himself; he was of a character unalterably obliging toward the fair; to violence he would have opposed no violence in return, but would have waited till the storm was dissipated, and then have sought to improve the lucky moment when the bird of peace brooded over the subsiding billows, and the tumult of the bosom was ended.
