That supper was the last I ever had in my life with C——­ C——.  She was in excellent spirits, but I had made up my mind, and as I paid all my attentions to M——­ M——­, C——­ C——­ imitated my example without difficulty, and she devoted herself wholly to her new lover.

Foreseeing that we would, a little later, be all of us in each other’s way, I begged M——­ M——­ to arrange everything so that we could be apart, and she contrived it marvellously well.

After supper, the ambassador proposed a game of faro, which our beauties did not know; he called for cards, and placed one hundred Louis on the table before him; he dealt, and took care to make C——­ C——­ win the whole of that sum.  It was the best way to make her accept it as pin-money.  The young girl, dazzled by so much gold, and not knowing what to do with it, asked her friend to take care of it for her until such time as she should leave the convent to get married.

When the game was over, M——­ M——­ complained of a headache, and said that she would go to bed in the alcove:  she asked me to come and lull her to sleep.  We thus left the new lovers free to be as gay as they chose.  Six hours afterwards, when the alarum warned us that it was time to part, we found them asleep in each other’s embrace.  I had myself passed an amorous and quiet night, pleased with M——­ M——­, and with out giving one thought to C——­ C——.

CHAPTER XXII

M. De Bernis Goes Away Leaving Me the Use of His Casino—­His Good Advice:  How I Follow It—­Peril of M. M. and Myself—­Mr. Murray, the English Ambassador—­Sale of the Casino and End of Our Meetings—­Serious Illness of M. M.—­Zorzi and Condulmer—­Tonnie

Though the infidelities of C——­ C——­ made me look at her with other eyes than before, and I had now no intention of making her the companion of my life, I could not help feeling that it had rested with me to stop her on the brink of the stream, and I therefore considered it my duty always to be her friend.

If I had been more logical, the resolution I took with respect to her would doubtless have been of another kind.  I should have said to myself:  After seducing her, I myself have set the example of infidelity; I have bidden her to follow blindly the advice of her friend, although I knew that the advice and the example of M—–­M——­ would end in her ruin; I had insulted, in the most grievous manner, the delicacy of my mistress, and that before her very eyes, and after all this how could I ask a weak woman to do what a man, priding himself on his strength, would shrink from at tempting?  I should have stood self-condemned, and have felt that it was my duty to remain the same to her, but flattering myself that I was overcoming mere prejudices, I was in fact that most degraded of slaves, he who uses his strength to crush the weak.