When the game was over, M——­ M——­ complained of a headache, and said that she would go to bed in the alcove:  she asked me to come and lull her to sleep.  We thus left the new lovers free to be as gay as they chose.  Six hours afterwards, when the alarum warned us that it was time to part, we found them asleep in each other’s embrace.  I had myself passed an amorous and quiet night, pleased with M——­ M——­, and with out giving one thought to C——­ C——.

CHAPTER XXII

M. De Bernis Goes Away Leaving Me the Use of His Casino—­His Good Advice:  How I Follow It—­Peril of M. M. and Myself—­Mr. Murray, the English Ambassador—­Sale of the Casino and End of Our Meetings—­Serious Illness of M. M.—­Zorzi and Condulmer—­Tonnie

Though the infidelities of C——­ C——­ made me look at her with other eyes than before, and I had now no intention of making her the companion of my life, I could not help feeling that it had rested with me to stop her on the brink of the stream, and I therefore considered it my duty always to be her friend.

If I had been more logical, the resolution I took with respect to her would doubtless have been of another kind.  I should have said to myself:  After seducing her, I myself have set the example of infidelity; I have bidden her to follow blindly the advice of her friend, although I knew that the advice and the example of M—–­M——­ would end in her ruin; I had insulted, in the most grievous manner, the delicacy of my mistress, and that before her very eyes, and after all this how could I ask a weak woman to do what a man, priding himself on his strength, would shrink from at tempting?  I should have stood self-condemned, and have felt that it was my duty to remain the same to her, but flattering myself that I was overcoming mere prejudices, I was in fact that most degraded of slaves, he who uses his strength to crush the weak.

The day after Shrove Tuesday, going to the casino of Muran, I found there a letter from M——­ M——­, who gave me two pieces of bad news:  that C——­ C——­ had lost her mother, and that the poor girl was in despair; and that the lay-sister, whose rheum was cured, had returned to take her place.  Thus C——­ C——­ was deprived of her friend at a time when she would have given her consolation, of which she stood in great need.  C——­ C——­, it seemed, had gone to share the rooms of her aunt, who, being very fond of her, had obtained permission from the superior.  This circumstance would prevent the ambassador taking any more suppers with her, and I should have been delighted if chance had put this obstacle in his path a few days sooner.

All these misfortunes seemed of small account com pared with what I was afraid of, for C——­ C——­ might have to pay the price for her pleasures, and I so far regarded myself as the origin of her unhappiness as to feel bound never to abandon her, and this might have involved me in terrible complications.