or contempt; for such privacies, though obtained upon never so scandalous terms, do yet oblige to some good will:  I have sometimes, upon their tricks and evasions, discovered a little indiscreet anger and impatience; for I am naturally subject to rash emotions, which, though light and short, often spoil my market.  At any time they have consulted my judgment, I never stuck to give them sharp and paternal counsels, and to pinch them to the quick.  If I have left them any cause to complain of me, ’tis rather to have found in me, in comparison of the modern use, a love foolishly conscientious than anything else.  I have kept my, word in things wherein I might easily have been dispensed; they sometimes surrendered themselves with reputation, and upon articles that they were willing enough should be broken by the conqueror:  I have, more than once, made pleasure in its greatest effort strike to the interest of their honour; and where reason importuned me, have armed them against myself; so that they ordered themselves more decorously and securely by my rules, when they frankly referred themselves to them, than they would have done by their own.  I have ever, as much as I could, wholly taken upon myself alone the hazard of our assignations, to acquit them; and have always contrived our meetings after the hardest and most unusual manner, as less suspected, and, moreover, in my opinion, more accessible.  They are chiefly more open, where they think they are most securely shut; things least feared are least interdicted and observed; one may more boldly dare what nobody thinks you dare, which by its difficulty becomes easy.  Never had any man his approaches more impertinently generative; this way of loving is more according to discipline but how ridiculous it is to our people, and how ineffectual, who better knows than I? yet I shall not repent me of it; I have nothing there more to lose: 

                        “Me tabula sacer
                         Votiva paries, indicat uvida
                         Suspendisse potenti
                         Vestimenta maris deo:” 

["The holy wall, by my votive table, shows that I have hanged up my
wet clothes in honour of the powerful god of the sea.” 
—­Horace, Od., i. 5, 13.]

’tis now time to speak out.  But as I might, per adventure, say to another, “Thou talkest idly, my friend; the love of thy time has little commerce with faith and integrity;”

              “Haec si tu postules
               Ratione certa facere, nihilo plus agas,
               Quam si des operam, ut cum ratione insanias:” 

["If you seek to make these things certain by reason, you will do no
more than if you should seek to be mad in your senses.” 
—­Terence, Eun., act i., sc. i, v. 16.]