For, she says, I have foregone husband, children, all
the enjoyments of life, for the attainment of this single object, the
favour of God, and good repute amongst men. Yet one day the
offender, an adept from boyhood in corrupting families, with the
impudence habitual to him, forced an entrance into my house; and thus
within the bare limits of an interview an acquaintanceship was
formed. It was only owing to my ignorance of the man, and to that
timidity which comes from inexperience, that I hesitated openly to turn
him out of doors. Yet to such a pitch of impiety and insolence
did he come, that he filled the whole city with slanders, and publicly
inveighed against me by affixing to the church doors libellous
placards. For this conduct, it is true, he incurred the
displeasure of the law: but, nevertheless, he returned to his
slanderous attacks on me. Once more the market-place was filled
with his abuse, as well as the gymnasia, theatres, and houses whose
congeniality of habits gained him an admittance. Nor did his very
extravagance lead men to recognise those virtues wherein I was
conspicuous, so universally had I been represented as being of an
incontinent disposition. In these calumnies, she goes on to say,
some find a delight—such is the pleasure men naturally feel in
the disparagement of others; some profess to be pained, but shew no
sympathy; others believe the truth of these slanders; others again,
having regard to the persistency of his oaths, are undecided. But
sympathy I have none. And now indeed I begin to realise my
loneliness, and bewail myself. I have no brother, friend,
relation, no servant, bond or free, in a word, no one whatever to share
my grief. And yet, I think, I am more than any one else an object
of pity, in a city where the haters of wickedness are so few.
They bandy violence; but violence, though they fail to see it, moves in
a circle, and in time will overtake each one of them.