Volume III Part 42 (1/2)
”I shall be convinced when I have verified the truth of the reply”
”Are you persuaded, dearest Esther, that I have had nothing to do with fra this answer?”
”I shall be quite sure of it if it has spoken the truth, and if so the oracle will have conquered, for the matter is so secret a one that even I do not know of it You need not know yourself, as it is only a trifle which would not interest you; but it will be enough to convince ence which has nothing in common with yours”
There was soof sha her, and I shed some tears, which Esther could only interpret favourably to me Nevertheless, they were tears of remorse, and now, as I write after such a lapse of years, I still regret having deceived one so worthy of my esteem and love Even then I reproachedof shame would not letastray one whose esteeain
In the mean time I was not absolutely sure that I had hit theelse, every law has its exceptions, and Ia pitfall for ht, Esther would no doubt be convinced for the moment, but her belief would speedily disappear if she chanced to discover that the correspondence of moles on the human body was a necessary law of nature
In that case I could only anticipate her scorn But however I ht tremble I had carried the deception too far, and could not draw back
I left Esther to call on Rigerboos, whom I thanked for his offices on my behalf with the chief of the police He toldto fear from Piccoloo about without pistols ”I a for Batavia,”
said he, ”in a vessel which I have laden with the ruins of ht this the best plan I have not insured the cargo, so as not diminish my profits, which will be considerable if I succeed If the shi+p is taken or wrecked I shall take care not to survive its loss; and after all I shall not lose much”
Poor Riberboos said all this as if he were jesting, but despair had no doubt a good deal to do with his resolve, since it is only in greatTherese Trenti, whoerboos always spoke of as Our Lady, had contributed to his ruin in no sree She was then in London, where, by her own account, she was doing well She had exchanged the name of Trenti for that of Cornelis, or Cornely, which, as I found out afterwards, was Rigerboo's real na to this curious woe of the circuerboos desired to coland When we had finished ent sleighing on the Amstel, which had been frozen over for several days This diversion, of which the Dutch are very fond, is, to inable, for an objectless journey is no pleasure to me After ell frozen ent to eat oysters, with Sillery, to warain, and after that ent fro to co better to do; but it seemed decreed that whenever I preferred any amusement of this kind to the charrief
I do not kno it happened, but as ere going into one of these casinos Rigerboos called me loudly by my name, and at that instant a woman, such as one usually finds in these places, cah the roohted I saas the wretched Lucie, who ht of her was disagreeable to ratulatingher oretchedness
I saw that I could neither avoid her nor repulse her without inhuirl would divert us by recounting the history of her life
Strictly speaking, Lucie had not becoly; one could still see that she had been a beautiful woman; but for all that her appearance inspired ust Since the days when I had known her at Pasean, nineteen years of acy, and shame had made her the ined She told us her story at great length; the pith of it ht 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 ar on the wages of prostitution for six years; but the goods she had to offer lowering in value, and her custoland with a young Greek girl, wholish officer of marines treated as his wife, and whoot tired of her After living for two or three years in the vilest haunts in London, Lucie ca able to sell her own person any longer, she beca 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 eundy I had ordered, and which neither I nor my friend touched Finally, she told us she was now supported by two pretty girls whoot
Rigerboos asked her, jokingly, if the girls were at the casino
”No,” said she, ”they are not here, and shall never coh birth, and their uncle, who looks after their interests, is a Venetian gentlehter, but Lucie, without losing countenance, told iven of theo and see them at a house she rented fifty paces off, and that we need not be afraid of being disturbed if ent, as their uncle lived in a different part of the town
”Oh, indeed!” said I, ”he does not live with his highborn nieces, then?”
”No, he only co, and to take all the erboos, ”ill go and see the the noble Venetian ladies of so honourable a profession, I told Lucie to take us to the house I knew very well that the girls were iuard; but the die was cast
We found the and pretty Lucie introduced me as a Venetian, and they were beside themselves with joy to have someone to whom they could talk I found out directly that they came from Padua, not Venice, as they spoke the Paduan dialect, which I knew very well I told them so, and they confessed it was the truth I asked the name of their uncle, but they said they could not tell erboos, catching hold of the one he liked best Lucie brought in soood many bottles of wine, and then left us
I was not in the huerboos was disposed to be merry; his sweetheart was at first inclined to be prudish on his taking liberties with her, but as I began to follow his example the ladies relaxed their severity; ent first to one and then the other, and before long they were both in the state of Eve before she used the fig-leaf