With this flattering address she threw off the coverlet with a vigorous gesture, and displayed all her beauties, which I might have gazed on with such different feelings from those which now filled my breast. For a moment I was silent with indignation.
All my passion had evaporated; in those voluptuous rounded limbs I
saw now only the covering of a wild beast's soul. I put back the coverlet with the greatest calmness, and addressed her in a tone of cold contempt:
"No, madam, I shall not leave this room degraded because you have told me so, but I shall leave it after imparting to you a few degrading truths, of which you cannot be ignorant if you are a woman of any decency whatever. Here are twenty-five louis, a wretched sum to give a virtuous woman in payment of her favours, but much more than you deserve. I am not brutal, and to convince you of the fact I am going to leave you in the undisturbed possession of your charms, which I despise as heartily as I should have admired them if your behaviour had been different. I only give you the money from a feeling of compassion which I cannot overcome, and which is the only feeling I now have for you.
Nevertheless, let me tell you that whether a woman sells herself for twenty-five louis or twenty-five million louis she is as much a prostitute in the one case as in the other, if she does not give her love with herself, or at all events the semblance of love.
Farewell."
I went back to my room, and in course of time Stuard came to thank me.
"Sir," said I, "let me alone; I wish to hear no more about your wife."
They went away the next day for Lyons, and my readers will hear of them again at Liege.
In the afternoon Dolci took me to his garden that I might see the gardener's sister. She was pretty, but not so pretty as he was.
He soon got her into a good humour, and after some trifling objection she consented to be loved by him in my presence. I saw that this Adonis had been richly dowered by nature, and I told him that with such a physical conformation he had no need of emptying his father's purse to travel, and before long he took my advice.
This fair Ganymede might easily have turned me into Jove, as he struggled amorously with the gardener's sister.
As I was going home I saw a young man coming out of a boat; he was from twenty to twenty-five years old, and looked very sad. Seeing me looking at him, he accosted me, and humbly asked for alms, shewing me a document authorizing him to beg, and a passport stating he had left Madrid six weeks before. He came from Parma, and was named Costa. When I saw Parma my national prejudice spoke in his favour, and I asked him what misfortune had reduced him to beggary.
"Only lack of money to return to my native country," said he.
"What were you doing at Madrid, and why did you leave?"
"I was there four years as valet to Dr. Pistoria, physician to the King of Spain, but on my health failing I left him. Here is a certificate which will shew you that I gave satisfaction."
"What can you do?"
"I write a good hand, I can assist a gentleman as his secretary, and I intend being a scribe when I get home. Here are some verses I copied yesterday."
"You write well; but can you write correctly without a book?"
"I can write from dictation in French, Latin, and Spanish."
"Correctly?"
"Yes, sir, if the dictation is done properly, for it is the business of the one who dictates to see that everything is correct."