may meet with some indulgence
at his hands.

I might be told that if I had wished to follow the rules of pure morality
I ought either to have declined intimate intercourse with them or to have
undeceived them. I cannot deny these premises, but I will answer that I
was only twenty years of age, I was intelligent, talented, and had just
been a poor fiddler. I should have lost my time in trying to cure them of
their weakness; I should not have succeeded, for they would have laughed
in my face, deplored my ignorance, and the result of it all would have
been my dismissal. Besides, I had no mission, no right, to constitute
myself an apostle, and if I had heroically resolved on leaving them as
soon as I knew them to be foolish visionaries, I should have shewn myself
a misanthrope, the enemy of those worthy men for whom I could procure
innocent pleasures, and my own enemy at the same time; because, as a
young man, I liked to live well, to enjoy all the pleasures natural to
youth and to a good constitution.

By acting in that manner I should have failed in common politeness, I
should perhaps have caused or allowed M. de Bragadin's death, and I
should have exposed those three honest men to becoming the victims of the
first bold cheat who, ministering to their monomania, might have won
their favour, and would have ruined them by inducing them to undertake
the chemical operations of the Great Work. There is also another
consideration, dear reader, and as I love you I will tell you what it is.
An invincible self-love would have prevented me from declaring myself
unworthy of their friendship either by my ignorance or by my pride; and I
should have been guilty of great rudeness if I had ceased to visit them.

I took, at least it seems to me so, the best, the most natural, and the
noblest decision, if we consider the disposition of their mind, when I
decided upon the plan of conduct which insured me the necessaries of life
and of those necessaries who could be a better judge than your very
humble servant?

Through the friendship of those three men, I was certain of obtaining
consideration and influence in my own country. Besides, I found it very
flattering to my vanity to become the subject of the speculative
chattering of empty fools who, having nothing else to do, are always
trying to find out the cause of every moral phenomenon they meet with,
which their narrow intellect cannot understand.

People racked their brain in Venice