the charge; but I availed myself of an opportunity that offered, and was
convinced that my husband's infidelities were both frequent and
disgraceful.

Still I pursued my plan of the most rigid domestic propriety; still I
preserved my faith inviolate, my name unsullied. At times I endured the
most poignant sufferings, from the pain of disappointed hope, and the
pressure of pecuniary distresses.

During my long seclusion from society, for I could not associate with
those whom destiny had placed in a similar predicament, not one of my
female friends even inquired what was become of me. Those who had been
protected and received with the most cordial hospitality by me in my
more happy hours now neglected all the kind condolence of sympathetic
feeling, and shunned both me and my dreary habitation. From that hour I
have never felt the affection for my own sex which perhaps some women
feel; I have never taught my heart to cherish their friendship, or to
depend on their attentions beyond the short perspective of a prosperous
day. Indeed, I have almost uniformly found my own sex my most inveterate
enemies; I have experienced little kindness from them, though my bosom
has often ached with the pang inflicted by their envy, slander, and
malevolence.

The Italian whom I took occasion to mention as the _cicerone_ of my
husband's gallantries was named Albanesi. He was the husband to a
beautiful Roman woman of that name, who had some years before attracted
considerable attention in the hemisphere of gallantry, where she had
shone as a brilliant constellation. She had formerly been the mistress
of a Prince de Courland, and afterward of the Covet de Belgeioso, the
imperial ambassador; but at the period in which I first saw her she was,