Stoic
philosophers," he said to me, "'Sequere Deum', can be perfectly explained
by these words: 'Give yourself up to whatever fate offers to you,
provided you do not feel an invincible repugnance to accept it.'" He
added that it was the genius of Socrates, 'saepe revocans, raro
impellens'; and that it was the origin of the 'fata viam inveniunt' of
the same philosophers.

M. de Malipiero's science was embodied in that very lesson, for he had
obtained his knowledge by the study of only one book--the book of man.
However, as if it were to give me the proof that perfection does not
exist, and that there is a bad side as well as a good one to everything,
a certain adventure happened to me a month afterwards which, although I
was following his own maxims, cost me the loss of his friendship, and
which certainly did not teach me anything.

The senator fancied that he could trace upon the physiognomy of young
people certain signs which marked them out as the special favourites of
fortune. When he imagined that he had discovered those signs upon any
individual, he would take him in hand and instruct him how to assist
fortune by good and wise principles; and he used to say, with a great
deal of truth, that a good remedy would turn into poison in the hands of
a fool, but that poison is a good remedy when administered by a learned
man. He had, in my time, three favourites in whose education he took
great pains. They were, besides myself, Therese Imer, with whom the
reader has a slight acquaintance already, and the third was the daughter
of the boatman Gardela, a girl three years younger than I, who had the
prettiest and most fascinating countenance. The speculative old man, in
order to assist fortune in her particular case, made her learn dancing,
for, he would say, the ball cannot reach the pocket unless someone pushes
it. This girl made a great reputation at Stuttgard under the name of
Augusta. She was the favourite mistress of the Duke of Wurtemburg in
1757. She was a most charming woman. The last time I saw her she was in
Venice, and she died two years afterwards. Her husband, Michel de
l'Agata, poisoned himself a short time after her death.

One day we had all three dined with him, and after dinner the senator
left us, as was his wont, to enjoy his siesta; the little Gardela, having
a dancing lesson to take, went away soon after him, and I found myself
alone with Therese, whom I rather admired, although I had never made love