Wishing to discover if she was anyone I knew I looked at her attentively, and seemed to recollect her features, although I could not decide who she could be.  Feeling rather curious on the subject I sat down next to her, and asked if she came from Venice, and if she had left that country some time ago.

“Nearly eighteen years,” she replied.

I ordered a bottle of wine, and asked if she would take any; she said yes, and added, if I liked, she would oblige me.

“I haven’t time,” I said; and I gave the poor wretch the change I received from the waiter.  She was full of gratitude, and would have embraced me if I had allowed her.

“Do you like being at Amsterdam better than Venice?” I asked.

“Alas, no! for if I were in my own country I should not be following this dreadful trade.”

“How old were you when you left Venice.”

“I was only fourteen and lived happily with my father and mother, who now may have died of grief.”

“Who seduced you?”

“A rascally footman.”

“In what part of Venice did you live?”

“I did not live in Venice, but at Friuli, not far off.”

Friuli . . . eighteen years ago . . . a footman . . .  I felt moved, and looking at the wretched woman more closely I soon recognized in her Lucie of Pasean.  I cannot describe my sorrow, which I concealed as best I could, and tried hard to keep up my indifferent air.  A life of debauchery rather than the flight of time had tarnished her beauty, and ruined the once exquisite outlines of her form.  Lucie, that innocent and pretty maiden, grown ugly, vile, a common prostitute!  It was a dreadful thought.  She drank like a sailor, without looking at me, and without caring who I was.  I took a few ducats from my purse, and slipped them into her hand, and without waiting for her to find out how much I had given her I left that horrible den.

I went to bed full of saddening thoughts.  Not even under the Leads did I pass so wretched a day.  I thought I must have risen under some unhappy star!  I loathed myself.  With regard to Lucie I felt the sting of remorse, but at the thought of M. d’O——­ I hated myself.  I considered that I should cause him a loss of three or four hundred thousand florins; and the thought was a bitter drop in the cup of my affection for Esther.  I fancied, she, as well as her father, would become my implacable foe; and love that is not returned is no love at all.

I spent a dreadful night.  Lucie, Esther, her father, their hatred of me, and my hatred of myself, were the groundwork of my dreams.  I saw Esther and her father, if not ruined, at all events impoverished by my fault, and Lucie only thirty-two years old, and already deep in the abyss of vice, with an infinite prospect of misery and shame before her.  The dawn was welcome indeed, for with its appearance a calm came to my spirit; it is, the darkness which is terrible to a heart full of remorse.