“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.

I got up and dressed myself in my best, and went in a coach to do my suit to the Princesse de Galitzin, who, was staying at the “Etoile d’Orient.”  I found her out; she had gone to the Admiralty.  I went there, and found her accompanied by M. de Reissak and the Count de Tot, who had just received news of my friend Pesselier, at whose house I made his acquaintance, and who was dangerously ill when I left Paris.

I sent away my coach and began to walk towards M. d’O——­’s house on the Amsel.  The extreme elegance of my costume was displeasing in the eyes of the Dutch populace, and they hissed and hooted me, after the manner of the mob all the world over, Esther saw me coming from the window, drew the rope, and opened the door.  I ran in, shut the door behind me, and as I was going up the wooden staircase, on the fourth or fifth step my foot struck against some yielding substance.  I looked down and saw a green pocket-book.  I stooped down to pick it up, but was awkward enough