a bed of thorns! Anger and
indignation, restrained by the reserve I was compelled to adopt for fear
of losing the object of my ardent love, made me tremble all over. The
inventors of hell would not have failed to place that suffering among its
torments, if they had known it. The lustful P---- C---- had thought of
giving me a great proof of his friendship by the disgusting action he had
been guilty of, and he had reckoned as nothing the dishonour of his
mistress, and the delicacy of his sister whom he had thus exposed to
prostitution. I do not know how I contrived not to strangle him. The next
day, when he called on me, I overwhelmed him with the most bitter
reproaches, and he tried to excuse himself by saying that he never would
have acted in that manner if he had not felt satisfied that I had already
treated his sister in the tete-a-tete in the same way that he treated his
mistress before us.

My love for C---- C---- became every instant more intense, and I had made
up my mind to undertake everything necessary to save her from the fearful
position in which her unworthy brother might throw her by selling her for
his own profit to some man less scrupulous than I was. It seemed to me
urgent. What a disgusting state of things! What an unheard-of species of
seduction! What a strange way to gain my friendship! And I found myself
under the dire necessity of dissembling with the man whom I despised most
in the world! I had been told that he was deeply in debt, that he had
been a bankrupt in Vienna, where he had a wife and a family of children,
that in Venice he had compromised his father who had been obliged to turn
him out of his house, and who, out of pity, pretended not to know that he
had kept his room in it. He had seduced his wife, or rather his mistress,
who had been driven away by her husband, and after he had squandered
everything she possessed, and he found himself at the end of his wits, he
had tried to turn her prostitution to advantage. His poor mother who
idolized him had given him everything she had, even her own clothes, and
I expected him to plague me again for some loan or security, but I was
firmly resolved on refusing. I could not bear the idea of C---- C---- being
the innocent cause of my ruin, and used as a tool by her brother to keep
up his disgusting life.

Moved by an irresistible feeling, by what is called perfect love, I
called upon P---- C---- on the following day, and, after I had told him
that I