der that I
might not be obliged to offer her anything or to eat with her.

After she had left me I took some soup and then enjoyed a quiet sleep,
for which I felt all the better. When I came to consider what had passed
the day before I concluded that the Charpillon was repentant, but I
seemed no longer to care anything about her.

Here I may as well confess, in all humility, what a change love worked on
me in London, though I had attained the age of thirty-eight. Here closed
the first act of my life; the second closed when I left Venice in 1783,
and probably the third will close here, as I amuse myself by writing
these memoirs. Thus, the three-act comedy will finish, and if it be
hissed, as may possibly be the case, I shall not hear the sounds of
disapproval. But as yet the reader has not seen the last and I think the
most interesting scene of the first act.

I went for a walk in the Green Park and met Goudar. I was glad to see
him, as the rogue was useful to me.

"I have just been at the Charpillons," he began; "they were all in high
spirits. I tried in vain to turn the conversation on you, but not a word
would they utter."

"I despise them entirely," I rejoined, "I don't want to have anything
more to do with them."

He told me I was quite right, and advised me to persevere in my plan. I
made him dine with me, and then we went to see the well-known procuress,
Mrs. Wells, and saw the celebrated courtezan, Kitty Fisher, who was
waiting for the Duke of---- to take her to a ball. She was magnificently
dressed, and it is no exaggeration to say that she had on diamonds worth
five hundred thousand francs. Goudar told me that if I liked I might have
her then and there for ten guineas. I did not care to do so, however,
for, though charming, she could only speak English, and I liked to have
all my senses, including that of hearing, gratified. When she had gone,
Mrs. Wells told us that Kitty had eaten a bank-note for a thousand
guineas, on a slice of bread and butter, that very day. The note was a
present from Sir Akins, brother of the fair Mrs. Pitt. I do not know
whether the bank thanked Kitty for the present she had made it.

I spent an hour with a girl named Kennedy, a fair Irishwoman, who could
speak a sort of French, and behaved most extravagantly under the
influence of champagne; but the image of the Charpillon was still before
me, though I knew it not, and I could not enjoy anything. I went home
feeling sad and il