ll alone with you in your casino in Venice; let me know
whether you will be at the usual hour near the statue of the hero
Colleoni. In case you should be prevented, name any other day."

I had to answer those two letters in the same spirit in which they had
been written, and in spite of all the bitter feelings which were then
raging in my heart, my answers were to be as sweet as honey. I was in
need of great courage, but I said to myself: "George Dandin, tu las
voulu!" I could not refuse to pay the penalty of my own deeds, and I have
never been able to ascertain whether the shame I felt was what is called
shamefacedness. It is a problem which I leave to others.

In my letter to C---- C---- I had the courage, or the effrontery, to
congratulate her, and to encourage her to imitate M---- M----, the best
model, I said, I could propose to her.

I wrote to my nun that I would be punctual at the appointment near the
statue, and amidst many false compliments, which ought to have betrayed
the true state of my heart, I told her that I admired the perfect
education she had given to C---- C----, but that I congratulated myself
upon having escaped the torture I should have suffered in the mysterious
observatory, for I felt that I could not have borne it.

On the Wednesday I was punctual at the rendezvous, and I had not to wait
long for M---- M----, who came disguised in male attire. "No theatre
to-night," she said to me; "let us go to the 'ridotto', to lose or double
our money." She had six hundred sequins. I had about one hundred. Fortune
turned her back upon us, and we lost all. I expected that we would then
leave that cutthroat place, but M---- M----, having left me for a minute,
came back with three hundred sequins which had been given to her by her
friend, whom she knew where to find. That money given by love or by
friendship brought her luck for a short time, and she soon won back all
we had lost, but in our greediness or imprudence we continued to play,
and finally we lost our last sequin.

When we could play no longer, M---- M---- said to me,

"Now that we need not fear thieves, let us go to our supper."

That woman, religious and a Free-thinker, a libertine and gambler, was
wonderful in all she did. She had just lost five hundred pounds, and she
was as completely at her ease as if she had won a very large sum. It is
true that the money she had just lost had not cost her much.

As soon as we were alone, she found me s