sperity and bewailing her own wretchedness. I
saw that I could neither avoid her nor repulse her without inhumanity, so
I called to Rigerboos to come upstairs and the girl would divert us by
recounting the history of her life.

Strictly speaking, Lucie had not become ugly; one could still see that
she had been a beautiful woman; but for all that her appearance inspired
me with terror and disgust. Since the days when I had known her at
Pasean, nineteen years of misery, profligacy, and shame had made her the
most debased, the vilest creature that can be imagined. She told us her
story at great length; the pith of it might be expressed in six lines.

The footman who had seduced her had taken her to Trieste to lie in, and
the scoundrel lived on the sale of her charms for five or six months, and
then a sea captain, who had taken a fancy to her, took her to Zante with
the footman, who passed for her husband.

At Zante the footman turned soldier, and deserted the army four years
after. She was left alone and continued living on the wages of
prostitution for six years; but the goods she had to offer lowering in
value, and her customers being of the inferior kind, she set out for
England with a young Greek girl, whom an English officer of marines
treated as his wife, and whom he abandoned in the streets of London when
he got tired of her. After living for two or three years in the vilest
haunts in London, Lucie came to Holland, where, not being able to sell
her own person any longer, she became a procuress--a natural ending to
her career. Lucie was only thirty-three, but she was the wreck of a
woman, and women are always as old as they look.

While she told her history she emptied two bottles of Burgundy I had
ordered, and which neither I nor my friend touched. Finally, she told us
she was now supported by two pretty girls whom she kept, and who had to
give her the half of what they got.

Rigerboos asked her, jokingly, if the girls were at the casino.

"No," said she, "they are not here, and shall never come here, for they
are ladies of high birth, and their uncle, who looks after their
interests, is a Venetian gentleman."

At this I could not keep back my laughter, but Lucie, without losing
countenance, told me that she could only repeat the account they had
given of themselves, that if we wanted to be convinced we had only to go
and see them at a house she rented fifty paces off, and that we need not
be afraid of being