she would go to bed in the alcove: she asked me to come and lull her to
sleep. We thus left the new lovers free to be as gay as they chose. Six
hours afterwards, when the alarum warned us that it was time to part, we
found them asleep in each other's embrace. I had myself passed an amorous
and quiet night, pleased with M---- M----, and with out giving one thought
to C---- C----.

CHAPTER XXII

M. De Bernis Goes Away Leaving Me the Use of His Casino--His
Good Advice: How I Follow It--Peril of M. M. and Myself--Mr.
Murray, the English Ambassador--Sale of the Casino and End
of Our Meetings--Serious Illness of M. M.--Zorzi and
Condulmer--Tonnie

[Illustration: Chapter 22]

Though the infidelities of C---- C---- made me look at her with other eyes
than before, and I had now no intention of making her the companion of my
life, I could not help feeling that it had rested with me to stop her on
the brink of the stream, and I therefore considered it my duty always to
be her friend.

If I had been more logical, the resolution I took with respect to her
would doubtless have been of another kind. I should have said to myself:
After seducing her, I myself have set the example of infidelity; I have
bidden her to follow blindly the advice of her friend, although I knew
that the advice and the example of M---M---- would end in her ruin; I had
insulted, in the most grievous manner, the delicacy of my mistress, and
that before her very eyes, and after all this how could I ask a weak
woman to do what a man, priding himself on his strength, would shrink
from at tempting? I should have stood self-condemned, and have felt that
it was my duty to remain the same to her, but flattering myself that I
was overcoming mere prejudices, I was in fact that most degraded of
slaves, he who uses his strength to crush the weak.

The day after Shrove Tuesday, going to the casino of Muran, I found there
a letter from M---- M----, who gave me two pieces of bad news: that
C---- C---- had lost her mother, and that the poor girl was in despair; and
that the lay-sister, whose rheum was cured, had returned to take her
place. Thus C---- C---- was deprived of her friend at a time when she would
have given her consolation, of which she stood in great need. C---- C----,
it seemed, had gone to share the rooms of her aunt, who, being very fond
of her, had obtained permission from the superior. This circumstance
would prevent the