In May, Zaira had become so beautiful that when I went to Moscow I dared not leave her behind me, so I took her in place of a servant.  It was delicious to me to hear her chattering in the Venetian dialect I had taught her.  On a Saturday I would go with her to the bath where thirty of forty naked men and women were bathing together without the slightest constraint.  This absence of shame must arise, I should imagine, from native innocence; but I wondered that none looked at Zaira, who seemed to me the original of the statue of Psyche I had seen at the Villa Borghese at Rome.  She was only fourteen, so her breast was not yet developed, and she bore about her few traces of puberty.  Her skin was as white as snow, and her ebony tresses covered the whole of her body, save in a few places where the dazzling whiteness of her skin shone through.  Her eyebrows were perfectly shaped, and her eyes, though they might have been larger, could not have been more brilliant or more expressive.  If it had not been for her furious jealousy and her blind confidence in fortune-telling by cards, which she consulted every day, Zaira would have been a paragon among women, and I should never have left her.

A young and distinguished-looking Frenchman came to St. Petersburg with a young Parisian named La Riviere, who was tolerably pretty but quite devoid of education, unless it were that education common to all the girls who sell their charms in Paris.  This young man came to me with a letter from Prince Charles of Courland, who said that if I could do anything for the young couple he would be grateful to me.  They arrived just as I was breakfasting with Zaira.

“You must tell me,” said I to the young Frenchman, “in what way I can be of use to you.”

“By admitting us to your company, and introducing us to your friends.”

“Well, I am a stranger here, and I will come and see you, and you can come and see me, and I shall be delighted; but I never dine at home.  As to my friends, you must feel that, being a stranger, I could not introduce you and the lady.  Is she your wife?  People will ask me who you are, and what you are doing at St. Petersburg.  What am I to say?  I wonder Prince Charles did not send you to someone else.”

“I am a gentleman of Lorraine, and Madame la Riviere is my mistress, and my object in coming to St. Petersburg is to amuse myself.”

“Then I don’t know to whom I could introduce you under the circumstances; but I should think you will be able to find plenty of amusement without knowing anyone.  The theatres, the streets, and even the Court entertainments, are open to everyone.  I suppose you have plenty of money?”

“That’s exactly what I haven’t got, and I don’t expect any either.”

“Well, I have not much more, but you really astonish me.  How could you have been so foolish as to come here without money?”

“Well, my mistress said we could do with what money we got from day to day.  She induced me to leave Paris without a farthing, and up to now it seems to me that she is right.  We have managed to get on somehow.”