Whenever I think of Prince Charles de Ligne I cannot restrain my tears.  He was as brave as Achilles, but Achilles was invulnerable.  He would be alive now if he had remembered during the fight that he was mortal.  Who are they that, having known him, have not shed tears in his memory?  He was handsome, kind, polished, learned, a lover of the arts, cheerful, witty in his conversation, a pleasant companion, and a man of perfect equability.  Fatal, terrible revolution!  A cannon ball took him from his friends, from his family, from the happiness which surrounded him.

The Prince de Waldeck has also paid the penalty of his intrepidity with the loss of one arm.  It is said that he consoles himself for that loss with the consciousness that with the remaining one he can yet command an army.

O you who despise life, tell me whether that contempt of life renders you worthy of it?

The opera opened immediately after Easter, and I was present at every performance.  I was then entirely cured, and had resumed my usual life.  I was pleased to see that Baletti shewed off Marina to the best advantage.  I never visited her, but Baletti was in the habit of breakfasting with me almost every morning.

He had often mentioned an old actress who had left the stage for more than twenty years, and pretended to have been my father’s friend.  One day I took a fancy to call upon her, and he accompanied me to her house.

I saw an old, broken-down crone whose toilet astonished me as much as her person.  In spite of her wrinkles, her face was plastered with red and white, and her eyebrows were indebted to India ink for their black appearance.  She exposed one-half of her flabby, disgusting bosom, and there could be no doubt as to her false set of teeth.  She wore a wig which fitted very badly, and allowed the intrusion of a few gray hairs which had survived the havoc of time.  Her shaking hands made mine quiver when she pressed them.  She diffused a perfume of amber at a distance of twenty yards, and her affected, mincing manner amused and sickened me at the same time.  Her dress might possibly have been the fashion twenty years before.  I was looking with dread at the fearful havoc of old age upon a face which, before merciless time had blighted it, had evidently been handsome, but what amazed me was the childish effrontery with which this time-withered specimen of womankind was still waging war with the help of her blasted charms.

Baletti, who feared lest my too visible astonishment should vex her, told her that I was amazed at the fact that the beautiful strawberry which bloomed upon her chest had not been withered by the hand of Time.  It was a birth-mark which was really very much like a strawberry.  “It is that mark,” said the old woman, simpering, “which gave me the name of ’La Fragoletta.’”

Those words made me shudder.

I had before my eyes the fatal phantom which was the cause of my existence.  I saw the woman who had thirty years before, seduced my father:  if it had not been for her, he would never have thought of leaving his father’s house, and would never have engendered me in the womb of a Venetian woman.  I have never been of the opinion of the old author who says, ‘Nemo vitam vellet si daretur scientibus’.