This unhappy affair is no sooner over, but a naked mad woman breaks into the room, calls for her duke, her lord, her emperor.  As soon as she spies Aurengezebe, the object of all her fury and love, she calls for petticoats, is ready to sink with shame, and is dressed in all haste in new attire at his charge.  This unexpected accident of the mad woman makes Aurengezebe curious to know, whether others who are in their senses can guess at his quality.  For which reason the whole convent is examined one by one.  The matron marches in with a tawdry country girl:  “Pray, Winifred,” says she, “who do you think that fine man with those jewels and pearls is?” “I believe,” says Winifred, “it is our landlord.  It must be the squire himself.”  The emperor laughs at her simplicity.  “Go, fool,” says the matron:  then turning to the emperor, “Your greatness will pardon her ignorance!” After her, several others of different characters are instructed to mistake who he is in the same manner:  then the whole sisterhood are called together, and the emperor rises, and cocking his hat, declares, he is the Great Mogul, and they his concubines.  A general murmur goes through the assembly, and Aurengezebe certifying, that he keeps them for state rather than use, tells them, they are permitted to receive all men into their apartments; then proceeds through the crowd, among whom he throws medals shaped like half-crowns, and returns to his chariot.

This being all that passed the last day in which Aurengezebe visited the women’s apartments, I consulted Pacolet concerning the foundation of such strange amusements in old age:  to which he answered; “You may remember, when I gave you an account of my good fortune in being drowned on the thirtieth day of my human life, I told you of the disasters I should otherwise have met with before I arrived at the end of my stamen, which was sixty years.  I may now add an observation to you, that all who exceed that period, except the latter part of it is spent in the exercise of virtue and contemplation of futurity, must necessarily fall into an indecent old age, because, with regard to all the enjoyments of the years of vigour and manhood, childhood returns upon them:  and as infants ride on sticks, build houses in dirt, and make ships in gutters, by a faint idea of things they are to act hereafter; so old men play the lovers, potentates, and emperors, from the decaying image of the more perfect performances of their stronger years:  therefore be sure to insert AEsculapius and Aurengezebe in your next bill of mortality of the metaphorically defunct.”

Will’s Coffee-house, July 24.