“Now I desire to know,” continues the African author, “if this man had reason to make himself uneasy on the score of a mistress, and to spend the night like a mad man? For the fact is, that a thousand reflections rolled in his head; and the more he loved Fulvia, the more he feared to find her unfaithful. ‘Into what labyrinth have I thrust my self?’ said he to himself. ‘And to what purpose? What advantage will accrue to me, in case the favorite should win a castle; and what will be my fate, if she loses it? But why should she lose it? Am I not certain of Fulvia’s love? Ah! I am in the sole and entire possession of her; and if her Toy speak, it will be of me alone.⁠—But if the treacherous⁠—no, no, I should have had some previous notion of it; I should have observed some unevenness in her temper. Some time or other, these five years past, she would have betrayed herself.⁠—Yet the trial is dangerous.⁠—But it is now no longer time to recoil, I have lifted the vessel to my mouth, I must finish, though I were to spill the liquor.⁠—Perhaps also the oracle will be in my favour.⁠—Alas! what can I expect from it? Why must others have failed in their attacks on that virtue, over which I have triumphed?⁠—Ah! dear Fulvia, I wrong thee by my suspicions, and I forget what it cost me to conquer thee. A ray of hope enlightens me, and I flatter myself that thy Toy will obstinately keep silence.’ ”