u will come and dine with me at
the house of one of our devout friends."

I had not broken my fast for thirty-six hours, and having suffered much
from sea-sickness during the night, my stomach was quite empty. My erotic
inconvenience made me very uncomfortable, my mind felt deeply the
consciousness of my degradation, and I did not possess a groat! I was in
such a miserable state that I had no strength to accept or to refuse
anything. I was thoroughly torpid, and I followed the monk mechanically.

He presented me to a lady, saying that he was accompanying me to Rome,
where I intend to become a Franciscan. This untruth disgusted me, and
under any other circumstances I would not have let it pass without
protest, but in my actual position it struck me as rather comical. The
good lady gave us a good dinner of fish cooked in oil, which in Orsara is
delicious, and we drank some exquisite refosco. During our meal, a priest
happened to drop in, and, after a short conversation, he told me that I
ought not to pass the night on board the tartan, and pressed me to accept
a bed in his house and a good dinner for the next day in case the wind
should not allow us to sail; I accepted without hesitation. I offered my
most sincere thanks to the good old lady, and the priest took me all over
the town. In the evening, he brought me to his house where we partook of
an excellent supper prepared by his housekeeper, who sat down to the
table with us, and with whom I was much pleased. The refosco, still
better than that which I had drunk at dinner, scattered all my misery to
the wind, and I conversed gaily with the priest. He offered to read to me
a poem of his own composition, but, feeling that my eyes would not keep
open, I begged he would excuse me and postpone the reading until the
following day.

I went to bed, and in the morning, after ten hours of the most profound
sleep, the housekeeper, who had been watching for my awakening, brought
me some coffee. I thought her a charming woman, but, alas! I was not in a
fit state to prove to her the high estimation in which I held her beauty.

Entertaining feelings of gratitude for my kind host, and disposed to
listen attentively to his poem, I dismissed all sadness, and I paid his
poetry such compliments that he was delighted, and, finding me much more
talented than he had judged me to be at first, he insisted upon treating
me to a reading of his idylls, and I had to swallow them, bearing the
inf