This was the master-stroke of his plot. The proud virtue of his pupil was now greatly subdued; but, to fit him for his infernal purpose with double certainty, W. engaged him in a party of pleasure, from which he took care he should not return sober, and, after inflaming his lustful passions, introduced him to the chamber of his unconscious victim. Thus was accomplished the ruin of a virtuous girl prepared for destruction by the _medicinal_ agency of this broker in turpitude.
During the perpetration of this outrage, the unhappy sufferer was in a state of total insensibility; but when the effects of the drugs that had been given to her began to subside, and returning day exposed her situation, in the arms of a man whom she had never before seen, her heart died within her. The involuntary instrument of her undoing endeavoured to restore her; but his efforts proving ineffectual, he dispatched a messenger for W., who on his arrival administered some stimulus, and carried his pupil to a _cock-fight_. They both returned in the evening, for the purpose, it would appear, of repeating the scene of the former night. They found the wretched girl recovered from her swoon, it is true; but they also found that her reason had forsaken the polluted tenement: a state of the most deplorable idiocy had supervened!
Here the journal is abruptly broken off, and in no part of it is the infamous W. again mentioned, except in a note on a slip of paper written in red ink and affixed with wafers to the last leaf, which may best, perhaps, be inserted here.
“The conduct of W., from the unfortunate day I quitted England with him, was such as I could not have expected from a fiend of hell. His breath was contagious, and he never opened his mouth but to wither and consume.”
How soon after this base transaction the travellers separated, I have no means of ascertaining; but it is certain they did not leave Bourdeaux together; for, about three weeks afterwards, W. returned to England, and his unfortunate pupil embarked for Marseilles, where he arrived with satisfaction after a short voyage. His time at this place appears to have been spent more rationally and usefully than it had hitherto been in France. His remarks on the state of literature and science, together with the “empty-headed, would-be philosophers,” as he terms them, of Marseilles, are strikingly demonstrative of the force of his mind when directed to any worthy pursuit. After a stay of about three weeks, (he is seldom minute in dates,) he embarked for Toulon, where he staid ten days, and made a drawing of the harbour and fortifications, unobserved by any of the officers or soldiers by whom he was always attended.