Read "Roxana, The Fortunate Mistress" by Daniel Defoe online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
WE lived here very easy and quiet, and yet I cannot say I was so in my mind. I was like a fish out of water; I was as gay and as young in my disposition as I was at five-and-twenty, and as I had always been courted, flattered, and used to love it, so I missed it in my conversation; and this put me many times upon looking back upon things past.
I had very few moments in my life which in their reflection afforded me anything but regret, but of all the foolish actions I had to look back upon in my life, none looked so preposterous and so like distraction, nor left so much melancholy on my mind, as my parting with my friend the merchant of Paris, and the refusing him upon such honourable and just conditions as he had offered; and though on his just (which I called unkind) rejecting my invitation to come to him again I had looked on him with some disgust, yet now my mind ran upon him continually, and the ridiculous conduct of my refusing him, and I could never be satisfied about him. I flattered myself that if I could but see him I could yet master him, and that he would presently forget all that had passed that might be thought unkind; but as there was no room to imagine anything like that to be possible, I threw those thoughts off again as much as I could.