Thinking that I understood the wishes with which misery had inspired him, I took his address, and promised to pay him a visit.  I was curious to see what had become of a virtue of which I did not entertain a very high opinion.  I called the next day.  I found a house almost bare of furniture, and the daughter alone—­a circumstance which did not astonish me.  The young countess had seen me arrive, and received me on the stairs in the most amiable manner.  She was pretty well dressed, and I thought her handsome, agreeable, and lively, as she had been when I made her acquaintance in Fort St. Andre.  Her father having announced my visit, she was in high spirits, and she kissed me with as much tenderness as if I had been a beloved lover.  She took me to her own room, and after she had informed me that her mother was ill in bed and unable to see me, she gave way again to the transport of joy which, as she said, she felt in seeing me again.  The ardour of our mutual kisses, given at first under the auspices of friendship, was not long in exciting our senses to such an extent that in less than a quarter of an hour I had nothing more to desire.  When it was all over, it became us both, of course, to be, or at least to appear to be, surprised at what had taken place, and I could not honestly hesitate to assure the poor countess that it was only the first token of a constant and true love.  She believed it, or she feigned to believe it, and perhaps I myself fancied it was true—­for the moment.  When we had become calm again, she told me the fearful state to which they were reduced, her brothers walking barefooted in the streets, and her father having positively no bread to give them.

“Then you have not any lover?”

“What? a lover!  Where could I find a man courageous enough to be my lover in such a house as this?  Am I a woman to sell myself to the first comer for the sum of thirty sous?  There is not a man in Venice who would think me worth more than that, seeing me in such a place as this.  Besides, I was not born for prostitution.”

Such a conversation was not very cheerful; she was weeping, and the spectacle of her sadness, joined to the picture of misery which surrounded me, was not at all the thing to excite love.  I left her with a promise to call again, and I put twelve sequins in her hand.  She was surprised at the amount; she had never known herself so rich before.  I have always regretted I did not give her twice as much.

The next day P——­ C——­ called on me, and said cheerfully that his mother had given permission to her daughter to go to the opera with him, that the young girl was delighted because she had never been there before, and that, if I liked, I could wait for them at some place where they would meet me.

“But does your sister know that you intend me to join you?”

“She considers it a great pleasure.”

“Does your mother know it?”

“No; but when she knows it she will not be angry, for she has a great esteem for you.”