him to furnish me in his absence, with what money and other things I
should please to command, or have occasion for. This old fellow had not
visited me often, before I began to be sensible of the influence of my
eyes upon this old piece of touchwood; but he had not the confidence
to tell me he loved me, and modesty you know is no common fault of
his countrymen. He often insinuated that he knew a man of wealth and
substance, though striken indeed in years, and on that account not
so agreeable as a younger man, was passionately in love with me, and
desired to know whether my heart was so far engaged, that his friend
should not entertain, any hopes. I replied that I was surprized to hear
a friend of Albert's making an interest in me for another, and that if
love were a passion, I was any way sensible of, it could never be for an
old man, and much to that purpose. But all this would not do, in a
day or two I received this eloquent epistle from him." Here Mrs. Behn
inserts a translation of Van Bruin's letter, which was wrote in French,
and in a most ridiculous stile, telling her, he had often strove to
reveal to her the tempests of his heart, and with his own mouth scale
the walls of her affections; but terrified with the strength of her
fortifications, he concluded to make more regular approaches, to attack
her at a farther distance, and try first what a bombardment of letters
would do; whether these carcasses of love thrown into the sconces of her
eyes, would break into the midst of her breast, beat down the out-guard
of her aversion, and blow up the magazine of her cruelty, that she might
be brought to a capitulation, and yield upon, reasonable terms. He then
considers her as a goodly ship under sail for the Indies; her hair is
the pennants, her fore-head the prow, her eyes the guns, her nose the
rudder. He wishes he could once see her keel above water, and desires
to be her pilot, to steer thro' the Cape of Good-Hope, to the Indies of
love.