“I am at a loss to discover wherein consists the singularity of requesting a letter from one I have been in the habit of considering my most immediate and intimate friend. That you should think it singular, I do not wonder, as you presently take care to inform me that in so considering I labour under a mistake . . . You say that I shall probably be sorry for having asked you to write, when I have read a certain portion of your letter. This would be the case, perhaps, if anything any man could say to me would make me sorry. But I am not easily moved to contrition or repentance, either by falsehood or truth; and it does not in the least operate in that way. When truth is presented to me, I hope I shall grow better under the perception of it. When falsehood blows her foul breath upon me, it passes by like the idle wind I regard not. Since, therefore, I am invulnerable, I rejoice rather than repent that I requested a letter, as the reception of it has, in some measure, let me into the state of your feelings.
“You say that my pretence of a ten days’ ramble appears to be a cloak for a visit to Bath. What criminality there is in a visit to Bath that should require a cloak, I cannot perceive; but take my word for it, whatever desperate villany I may engage in shall not be under a cloak; and when, as you express it, I sink into vice, it shall not be into its sourness; it shall be into the dashing whirlpool that openly destroys everything around it. Therefore, whenever vice becomes my object, notorious shall be the fact.
