“I am a man, but a castrato; I have been examined.”

“Allow me to examine you likewise, and I will give you a doubloon.”

“I cannot, for it is evident that you love me, and such love is condemned by religion.”

“You did not raise these objections with the bishop’s chaplain.”

“He was an elderly priest, and besides, he only just glanced at me.”

“I will know the truth,” said I, extending my hand boldly.

But he repulsed me and rose from his chair.  His obstinacy vexed me, for I had already spent fifteen or sixteen sequins to satisfy my curiosity.

I began my dinner with a very bad humour, but the excellent appetite of my pretty guests brought me round, and I soon thought that, after all, cheerfulness was better than sulking, and I resolved to make up for my disappointment with the two charming sisters, who seemed well disposed to enjoy a frolic.

I began by distributing a few innocent kisses right and left, as I sat between them near a good fire, eating chestnuts which we wetted with Cyprus wine.  But very soon my greedy hands touched every part which my lips could not kiss, and Cecilia, as well as Marina, delighted in the game.  Seeing that Bellino was smiling, I kissed him likewise, and his half-open ruffle attracting my hand, I ventured and went in without resistance.  The chisel of Praxiteles had never carved a finer bosom!

“Oh! this is enough,” I exclaimed; “I can no longer doubt that you are a beautifully-formed woman!”

“It is,” he replied, “the defect of all castrati.”

“No, it is the perfection of all handsome women.  Bellino, believe me, I am enough of a good judge to distinguish between the deformed breast of a castrato, and that of a beautiful woman; and your alabaster bosom belongs to a young beauty of seventeen summers.”

Who does not know that love, inflamed by all that can excite it, never stops in young people until it is satisfied, and that one favour granted kindles the wish for a greater one?  I had begun well, I tried to go further and to smother with burning kisses that which my hand was pressing so ardently, but the false Bellino, as if he had only just been aware of the illicit pleasure I was enjoying, rose and ran away.  Anger increased in me the ardour of love, and feeling the necessity of calming myself either by satisfying my ardent desires or by evaporating them, I begged Cecilia, Bellino’s pupil, to sing a few Neapolitan airs.

I then went out to call upon the banker, from whom I took a letter of exchange at sight upon Bologna, for the amount I had to receive from him, and on my return, after a light supper with the two young sisters, I prepared to go to bed, having previously instructed Petronio to order a carriage for the morning.

I was just locking my door when Cecilia, half undressed, came in to say that Bellino begged me to take him to Rimini, where he was engaged to sing in an opera to be performed after Easter.