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I made Samson-like my escape from these Delilahs by stratagem. I assured them that I was sickening for the measles, which, like love, is always the more fatal the later it comes in life.
I am sure it is often embarrassing to Sarah and the girls, especially when they have company not the kind of company William and I had, thinly-bred missionaries, and Bible pedlers, and tramps, and beggars, and occasionally, toward the last a little, sweet-faced, pod-headed deaconess but Lilith ladies and one or two that William would call Delilahs, and handsome, sleek, intellectual men who appeared to be as ignorant of God as I am of natural history.
"I am not sure that it isn't beyond the imagination of a man to enter into a woman's most sacred feeling," remarked the rector, with a touch of the sentimentality in which he religiously shrouded the feminine sex. So ineradicable, indeed, was his belief in the inherent virtue of every woman, that he had several times fallen a helpless victim in the financial traps of conscienceless Delilahs.
"Dearie," said the old woman slowly, "Theah's been Delilahs eveh since theah's been Samsons an' they allus will be. I reckon Gawd made 'em to kinda take thu aige offen men's sharp desiah so as to keep it from cuttin' puah hearts apaht. Yuh cain't change natuh, lammie; wild oats will be agrowin' long afteh thu second comin' o' Christ!
In vain Montespan stormed and wept in her fits of jealous rage; in vain did the beautiful de Fontanges seek to lure him to her arms, until death claimed her so tragically before she had well passed her twentieth birthday. The King had had more than enough of such Delilahs. Pleasure had palled; peace was what he craved now salve for his seared conscience.
This foppery of an intimate acquaintance with rare vintages does not suit a sensible Englishman, as he is very much in earnest about his wines, and adopts one or two as his lifelong friends, seldom exchanging them for any Delilahs of a moment, and reaping the reward of his constancy in an unimpaired stomach, and only so much gout as he deems wholesome and desirable.
And besides, of course I must have my literary harem, my pare aux cerfs, where my favorites await my moments of leisure and pleasure, my scarce and precious editions, my luxurious typographical masterpieces; my Delilahs, that take my head in their lap: the pleasant story-tellers and the like; the books I love because they are fair to look upon, prized by collectors, endeared by old associations, secret treasures that nobody else knows anything about; books, in short, that I like for insufficient reasons it may be, but peremptorily, and mean to like and to love and to cherish till death us do part.
Altogether, the disordered appearance of the room, the broken bottles, the fumes with which the hot atmosphere teemed, the evident profligacy of the two women, the half-undressed guise of the cavaliers, and the ruffian air and collected ferocity of the assailants, plainly denoted that it was one of those perilous festivals of pleasure in which imprudent gallants were often, in that day, betrayed by treacherous Delilahs into the hands of Philistines, who, not contented with stripping them for the sake of plunder, frequently murdered them for the sake of secrecy.
It was the policy of the Italian princes to entrap their conqueror with courtesies, and to entangle in silken meshes the barbarian they dreaded. What had happened already at Lyons, what was going to repeat itself at Naples, took place at Asti. The French king lost his heart to ladies, and confused his policy by promises made to Delilahs in the ballroom.
When they were mustered for the march outside the tembe, the only man absent was Bombay. While men were sent to search for him, others departed to get one more look, and one more embrace with their black Delilahs.
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