undisturbed possession of your charms, which I despise as heartily as I
should have admired them if your behaviour had been different. I only
give you the money from a feeling of compassion which I cannot overcome,
and which is the only feeling I now have for you. Nevertheless, let me
tell you that whether a woman sells herself for twenty-five louis or
twenty-five million louis she is as much a prostitute in the one case as
in the other, if she does not give her love with herself, or at all
events the semblance of love. Farewell."

I went back to my room, and in course of time Stuard came to thank me.

"Sir," said I, "let me alone; I wish to hear no more about your wife."

They went away the next day for Lyons, and my readers will hear of them
again at Liege.

In the afternoon Dolci took me to his garden that I might see the
gardener's sister. She was pretty, but not so pretty as he was. He soon
got her into a good humour, and after some trifling objection she
consented to be loved by him in my presence. I saw that this Adonis had
been richly dowered by nature, and I told him that with such a physical
conformation he had no need of emptying his father's purse to travel, and
before long he took my advice. This fair Ganymede might easily have
turned me into Jove, as he struggled amorously with the gardener's
sister.

As I was going home I saw a young man coming out of a boat; he was from
twenty to twenty-five years old, and looked very sad. Seeing me looking
at him, he accosted me, and humbly asked for alms, shewing me a document
authorizing him to beg, and a passport stating he had left Madrid six