tavern.
The reader has been already introduced to her. Goudar knew I had met her,
so he told me who she was, inviting us all to dine with him the next day.

Sara skewed no surprise nor confusion at the sight of me, but I was
petrified. She was dressed with the utmost elegance, received company
admirably, spoke Italian with perfect correctness, talked sensibly, and
was exquisitely beautiful; I was stupefied; the metamorphosis was so
great.

In a quarter of an hour five or six ladies of the highest rank arrived,
with ten or twelve dukes, princes, and marquises, to say nothing of a
host of distinguished strangers.

The table was laid for thirty, but before dinner Madame Goudar seated
herself at the piano, and sang a few airs with the voice of a siren, and
with a confidence that did not astonish the other guests as they knew
her, but which astonished me extremely, for her singing was really
admirable.

Goudar had worked this miracle. He had been educating her to be his wife
for six or seven years.

After marrying her he had taken her to Paris, Vienna, Venice, Florence,
Rome, etc., everywhere seeking fortune, but in vain. Finally he had come
to Naples, where he had brought his wife into the fashion of obliging her
to renounce in public the errors of the Anglican heresy. She had been
received into the Catholic Church under the auspices of the Queen of
Naples. The amusing part in all this was that Sara, being an Irishwoman,
had been born a Catholic, and had never ceased to be one.

All the nobility, even to the Court, went to see Sara, while she went
nowhere, for no one invited her. This kind of thing is a characteristic
of nobility all the world over.

Goudar told me all these particulars, and confessed that he only made his
living by gaming. Faro and biribi were the only pillars of his house; but
they must have been strong ones, for he lived in great style.

He asked me to join with him, and I did not care to refuse; my purse was
fast approaching total depletion, and if it were not for this resource I
could not continue living in the style to which I had been accustomed.

Having taken this resolution I declined returning to Rome with Betty and
Sir B---- M----, who wanted to repay me all I had spent on her account. I
was not in a position to be ostentatious, so I accepted his generous
offer.

Two months later I heard that l'Etoile had been liberated by the
influence of Cardinal Bernis, and had left Rome. Next year