Page:Clermont - Roche (1798, volume 4).djvu/266

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he indulged to the utter derangement of his paternal income. From the distresses which he was consequently involved in, and which his assumed character of steadiness and propriety prevented his disclosing to his uncle, he extricated himself by an union with an opulent heiress, whom the elegance and insinuation of his manners captivated, and was thus enabled again to set forward in the career of dissipation which his embarrassments had a little interrupted. Lafroy, the son of his nurse, his companion from the cradle, and attendant from the time he required an attendant, was the confident of all his profligate pursuits, and assisted him in the expenditure of such sums as materially injured his income, and again plunged him in distress.


To reveal that distress, he was now more unwilling than ever to do, from a conviction, that now more than ever he should be condemned for the dissipation which had involved him in it: he therefore set his wits