I come now to another and very material point; I mean women; and I will not address myself to you upon this subject, either in a religious, a moral, or a parental style.  I will even lay aside my age, remember yours, and speak to you as one man of pleasure, if he had parts too, would speak to another.  I will by no means pay for whores, and their never-failing consequences, surgeons; nor will I, upon any account, keep singers, dancers, actresses, and ‘id genus omne’; and, independently of the expense, I must tell you, that such connections would give me, and all sensible people, the utmost contempt for your parts and address; a young fellow must have as little sense as address, to venture, or more properly to sacrifice, his health and ruin his fortune, with such sort of creatures; in such a place as Paris especially, where gallantry is both the profession and the practice of every woman of fashion.  To speak plainly, I will not forgive your understanding c--------s and p-------s; nor will your constitution forgive them you.  These distempers, as well as their cures, fall nine times in ten upon the lungs.  This argument, I am sure, ought to have weight with you:  for I protest to you, that if you meet with any such accident, I would not give one year’s purchase for your life.  Lastly, there is another sort of expense that I will not allow, only because it is a silly one; I mean the fooling away your money in baubles at toy shops.  Have one handsome snuff-box (if you take snuff), and one handsome sword; but then no more pretty and very useless things.

By what goes before, you will easily perceive that I mean to allow you whatever is necessary, not only for the figure, but for the pleasures of a gentleman, and not to supply the profusion of a rake.  This, you must confess, does not savor of either the severity or parsimony of old age.  I consider this agreement between us, as a subsidiary treaty on my part, for services to be performed on yours.  I promise you, that I will be as punctual in the payment of the subsidies, as England has been during the last war; but then I give you notice at the same time, that I require a much more scrupulous execution of the treaty on your part, than we met with on that of our allies; or else that payment will be stopped.  I hope all that I have now said was absolutely unnecessary, and that sentiments more worthy and more noble than pecuniary ones, would of themselves have pointed out to you the conduct I recommend; but, at all events, I resolved to be once for all explicit with you, that, in the worst that can happen, you may not plead ignorance, and complain that I had not sufficiently explained to you my intentions.