musicians were sent for, and while they tuned their instruments
toilettes were made, and the orgy began.

It taught me same useful lessons. I learnt from it that amorous pleasures
are the effect and not the cause of gaiety. I sat gazing at three naked
bodies of perfect grace and beauty, the dance and the music were
ravishing and seductive, but nothing made any impression on me. After the
dance was over the male dancer treated the two females, one after the
other, until he was forced to rest. The French girl came up to ascertain
whether I skewed any signs of life, but feeling my hopeless condition she
pronounced me useless.

When it was all over I begged Edgar to give the French girl four guineas,
and to pay my share, as I had very little money about me.

What should I have said if I had been told in the morning that instead of
drowning myself I should take part in so pleasant an entertainment?

The debt I had contracted with the young Englishman made me resolve to
put off my suicide to another day. After the nymphs had gone I tried to
get rid of Edgar, but in vain; he told me I was getting better, that the
oysters I had taken skewed my stomach was improving, and that if I came
with him to Ranelagh I should be able to make a good dinner the next day.
I was weak and indifferent and let myself be persuaded, and got into a
coach with Edgar in obedience to the Stoic maxim I had learnt in the
happy days of my youth: 'Sequere Deum'.

We entered the fine rotunda with our hats off, and began to walk round
and round, our arms behind our backs--a common custom in England, at
least in those days.

A minuet was being danced, and I was so attracted by a lady who danced
extremely well that I waited for her to turn round. What made me notice
her more particularly was that her dress and hat were exactly like those
I had given to the Charpillon a few days before, but as I believed the
poor wretch to be dead or dying the likeness did not inspire me with any
suspicion. But the lady turned round, lifted her face, and I saw--the
Charpillon herself!

Edgar told me afterwards that at that moment he thought to see me fall to
the ground in an epileptic fit; I trembled and shuddered so terribly.

However, I felt so sure she was ill that I could not believe my own eyes,
and the doubt brought me to my senses.

"She can't be the Charpillon," I said to myself, "she is some other girl
like her, and my enfeebled senses have led me astray." In