introduction to her husband. Yet, peace of mind has greater charms even
than love; but, when love is in the way, we do not think so.

For a fortnight I was the lover of a young Venetian girl, very handsome,
whom her father, a certain Ramon, exposed to public admiration as a
dancer at the theatre. I might have remained longer her captive, if
marriage had not forcibly broken my chains. Her protectress, Madame
Cecilia Valmarano, found her a very proper husband in the person of a
French dancer, called Binet, who had assumed the name of Binetti, and
thus his young wife had not to become a French woman; she soon won great
fame in more ways than one. She was strangely privileged; time with its
heavy hand seemed to have no power over her. She always appeared young,
even in the eyes of the best judges of faded, bygone female beauty. Men,
as a general rule, do not ask for anything more, and they are right in
not racking their brain for the sake of being convinced that they are the
dupes of external appearance. The last lover that the wonderful Binetti
killed by excess of amorous enjoyment was a certain Mosciuski, a Pole,
whom fate brought to Venice seven or eight years ago; she had then
reached her sixty-third year!

My life in Venice would have been pleasant and happy, if I could have
abstained from punting at basset. The ridotti were only open to noblemen
who had to appear without masks, in their patrician robes, and wearing
the immense wig which had become indispensable since the beginning of the
century. I would play, and I was wrong, for I had neither prudence enough
to leave off when fortune was adverse, nor sufficient control over myself
to stop when I had won. I was then gambling through a feeling of avarice.
I was extravagant by taste, and I always regretted the money I had spent,
unless it had been won at the gaming-table, for it was only in that case
that the money had, in my opinion, cost me nothing.