"I am enjoying the cool evening breeze. Come up for a little while."

This Melulla, of fatal memory, was a courtezan from Zamte, of rare
beauty, who for the last four months had been the delight and the rage of
all the young men in Corfu. Those who had known her agreed in extolling
her charms: she was the talk of all the city. I had seen her often, but,
although she was very beautiful, I was very far from thinking her as
lovely as Madame F----, putting my affection for the latter on one side.
I recollect seeing in Dresden, in the year 1790, a very handsome woman
who was the image of Melulla.

I went upstairs mechanically, and she took me to a voluptuous boudoir;
she complained of my being the only one who had never paid her a visit,
when I was the man she would have preferred to all others, and I had the
infamy to give way.... I became the most criminal of men.

It was neither desire, nor imagination, nor the merit of the woman which
caused me to yield, for Melulla was in no way worthy of me; no, it was
weakness, indolence, and the state of bodily and mental irritation in
which I then found myself: it was a sort of spite, because the angel whom
I adored had displeased me by a caprice, which, had I not been unworthy
of her, would only have caused me to be still more attached to her.

Melulla, highly pleased with her success, refused the gold I wanted to
give her, and allowed me to go after I had spent two hours with her.

When I recovered my composure, I had but one feeling-hatred for myself
and for the contemptible creature who had allured me to be guilty of so
vile an insult to the loveliest of her sex. I went home the prey to
fearful remorse, and went to bed, but sleep never closed my eyes