You follow your old master on his travels; you wander through provinces and kingdoms; no grief can make any impression on you; you see new sights all day long; everything you behold entertains you, and you are unconscious of the flight of time.

It is not so with me. Shut up in a hideous prison, I am always surrounded by the same objects; there is no change even in what vexes me. Weighed down by fifty years of care and annoyance, I lament my wretched case: all my life long I have never passed a single untroubled day, or known a peaceful moment.

When my first master formed the cruel design of entrusting his wives to my care, and induced me by flattering promises, supplemented by a thousand threats, to separate myself forever from my manhood, tired of the toilsome service in which I was engaged, I calculated that the sacrifice of my passions would be more than repaid by ease and wealth. How unfortunate was I! Preoccupied with the thought of the ills I would escape, I had no idea of the others to which I fled: I expected that the inability to satisfy love would secure me from its assaults. Alas! although passion had been rendered inefficient, its force remained unabated; and, far from being relieved, I found myself surrounded by objects which continually whetted my desires. When I entered the seraglio, where everything filled me with regret for what I lost, my agitation increased each moment; a thousand natural charms seemed to unfold themselves to my sight only to tantalise me; and to crown my misery, I had constantly before me their fortunate possessor. While this wretched time lasted, I never led a woman to my master's bed without feeling wild rage in my heart, and despair unutterable in my soul.

And thus I passed my miserable youth, with no confidant but my own bosom. Wearied with longing and sad as night, there was nothing left but to endure in silence. I was forced to turn the sternest glances on those very women whom I would fain have regarded with looks of love. It would have undone me had they read my thoughts: how they would have tyrannised over me! I remember one day, as I attended a lady at the bath, I was so carried away that I lost command of myself, and dared to lay my hand where I should not. My first thought was that my last day had come. I was, however, fortunate enough to escape a dreadful death; but the fair one, whom I had made the witness of my weakness, extorted a heavy price for her silence: I entirely lost command of her, and she forced me, each time at the risk of my life, to comply with a thousand caprices.

At length, the fire of youth burnt out, I grow old and become, in that particular, at peace with myself. Women I regard with indifference, I pay them back for all their contempt, and all the torments which I suffered through them. I never forget that I was born to command them, and in the exercise of my authority I feel as if I had recovered my lost manhood. I hate women now that I can regard them without passion, and detect and discuss all their weaknesses. Although I guard them for another, I experience a secret joy in making myself obeyed. When I take all their pleasures from them, I feel as if it were at my behest alone; and that always gives me satisfaction more or less direct. The seraglio is my empire; and my ambition, the only passion left me, finds no small gratification. I mark with pleasure that all depends on me, and that my presence is required at all times: I willingly incur the hatred of these women, because that establishes me more firmly in my post. And they do not hate me for nothing, I can tell you: I interfere with their most innocent pleasures; I am always in the way, an insurmountable obstacle; before they know where they are they find their schemes frustrated; I am armed with refusals, I bristle with scruples; not a word is heard from me but duty, virtue, chastity, modesty. I make them desperate by dinning them with the weakness of their sex, and the authority of our master. Then I lament the necessity which requires me to be so severe, and lead them to believe that my only motives are their truest interests and my profound attachment to them.