Mardocheus told his wife what we had settled, and she instructed the Christian servant to cook my supper for me.

I had my effects taken upstairs, and then went with Mardocheus to the synagogue.

During the short service the Jews paid no attention to me or to several other Christians who were present.  The Jews go to the synagogue to pray, and in this respect I think their conduct worthy of imitation by the Christians.

On leaving the synagogue I went by myself to the Exchange, thinking over the happy time which would never return.

It was in Ancona that I had begun to enjoy life; and when I thought it over, it was quite a shock to find that this was thirty years ago, for thirty years is a long period in a man’s life.  And yet I felt quite happy, in spite of the tenth lustrum so near at hand for me.

What a difference I found between my youth and my middle age!  I could scarcely recognize myself.  I was then happy, but now unhappy; then all the world was before me, and the future seemed a gorgeous dream, and now I was obliged to confess that my life had been all in vain.  I might live twenty years more, but I felt that the happy time was passed away, and the future seemed all dreary.

I reckoned up my forty-seven years, and saw fortune fly away.  This in itself was enough to sadden me, for without the favours of the fickle goddess life was not worth living, for me at all events.

My object, then, was to return to my country; it was as if I struggled to undo all that I had done.  All I could hope for was to soften the hardships of the slow but certain passage to the grave.

These are the thoughts of declining years and not of youth.  The young man looks only to the present, believes that the sky will always smile upon him, and laughs at philosophy as it vainly preaches of old age, misery, repentance, and, worst of all, abhorred death.

Such were my thoughts twenty-six years ago; what must they be now, when I am all alone, poor, despised, and impotent.  They would kill me if I did not resolutely subdue them, for whether for good or ill my heart is still young.  Of what use are desires when one can no longer satisfy them?  I write to kill ennui, and I take a pleasure in writing.  Whether I write sense or nonsense, what matters?  I am amused, and that is enough.

   ’Malo scriptor delirus, inersque videri,
   Dum mea delectent mala me vel denique fallunt,
   Quam sapere.’

When I came back I found Mardocheus at supper with his numerous family, composed of eleven or twelve individuals, and including his mother—­an old woman of ninety, who looked very well.  I noticed another Jew of middle age; he was the husband of his eldest daughter, who did not strike me as pretty; but the younger daughter, who was destined for a Jew of Pesaro, whom she had never seen, engaged all my attention.  I remarked to her that if she had not seen her future husband she could not be in love with him, whereupon she replied in a serious voice that it was not necessary to be in love before one married.  The old woman praised the girl for this sentiment, and said she had not been in love with her husband till the first child was born.