I think it absolutely right that my ever-dear and beloved lady should be opened and embalmed.  It must be done out of hand this very afternoon.  Your acquaintance, Tomkins, and old Anderson of this place, I will bring with me, shall be the surgeons.  I have talked to the latter about it.

I will see every thing done with that decorum which the case, and the sacred person of my beloved require.

Every thing that can be done to preserve the charmer from decay shall also be done.  And when she will descend to her original dust, or cannot be kept longer, I will then have her laid in my family-vault, between my own father and mother.  Myself, as I am in my soul, so in person, chief mourner.  But her heart, to which I have such unquestionable pretensions, in which once I had so large a share, and which I will prize above my own, I will have.  I will keep it in spirits.  It shall never be out of my sight.  And all the charges of sepulture too shall be mine.

Surely nobody will dispute my right to her.  Whose was she living?—­Whose is she dead but mine?—­Her cursed parents, whose barbarity to her, no doubt, was the true cause of her death, have long since renounced her.  She left them for me.  She chose me therefore; and I was her husband.  What though I treated her like a villain?  Do I not pay for it now?  Would she not have been mine had I not?  Nobody will dispute but she would.  And has she not forgiven me?—­I am then in statu quo prius with her, am I not? as if I had never offended?—­Whose then can she be but mine?

I will free you from your executorship, and all your cares.

Take notice, Belford, that I do hereby actually discharge you, and every body, from all cares and troubles relating to her.  And as to her last testament, I will execute it myself.

There were no articles between us, no settlements; and she is mine, as you see I have proved to a demonstration; nor could she dispose of herself but as I pleased.—­D——­n——­n seize me then if I make not good my right against all opposers!

Her bowels, if her friends are very solicitous about them, and very humble and sorrowful, (and none have they of their own,) shall be sent down to them—­to be laid with her ancestors—­unless she has ordered otherwise.  For, except that, she shall not be committed to the unworthy earth so long as she can be kept out of it, her will shall be performed in every thing.

I send in the mean time for a lock of her hair.

I charge you stir not in any part of her will but by my express direction.  I will order every thing myself.  For am I not her husband? and, being forgiven by her, am I not the chosen of her heart?  What else signifies her forgiveness?

The two insufferable wretches you have sent me plague me to death, and would treat me like a babe in strings.—­D—­n the fellows, what end can they mean by it?  Yet that crippled monkey Doleman joins with them.  And, as I hear them whisper, they have sent for Lord M.—­to controul me, I suppose.