and the
passport of an old name, I could choose my own society: no circles were
closed against me. I sought my ideal of a woman amongst English ladies,
French countesses, Italian signoras, and German grafinnen. I could not
find her. Sometimes, for a fleeting moment, I thought I caught a glance,
heard a tone, beheld a form, which announced the realisation of my dream:
but I was presently undeserved. You are not to suppose that I desired
perfection, either of mind or person. I longed only for what suited
me--for the antipodes of the Creole: and I longed vainly. Amongst them
all I found not one whom, had I been ever so free, I--warned as I was of
the risks, the horrors, the loathings of incongruous unions--would have
asked to marry me. Disappointment made me reckless. I tried
dissipation--never debauchery: that I hated, and hate. That was my
Indian Messalina's attribute: rooted disgust at it and her restrained me
much, even in pleasure. Any enjoyment that bordered on riot seemed to
approach me to her and her vices, and I eschewed it.

"Yet I could not live alone; so I tried the companionship of mistresses.
The first I chose was Celine Varens--another of those steps which make a
man spurn himself when he recalls them. You already know what she was,
and how my liaison with her terminated. She had two successors: an
Italian, Giacinta, and a German, Clara; both considered singularly
handsome. What was their beauty to me in a few weeks? Giacinta was
unprincipled and violent: I tired of her in three months. Clara was
honest and quiet; but heavy, mindless, and unimpressible: not one whit to
my taste. I was glad to give her a sufficient sum to set her up in a
good line of business, and so get decently rid of her. But, Jane, I see
by your face you are not forming a very favourable opinion of me just
now. You think me an unfeeling, loose-principled rake: don't you?"

"I don't like you so well as I have done sometimes, indeed, sir. Did it
not seem to you in the least wrong to live in that way, first with one
mistress and then another? You talk of it as a mere matter of course."

"It was with me; and I did not like it. It was a grovelling fashion of
existence: I should never like to return to it. Hiring a mistress is the
next worse thing to buying a slave: both are often by nature, and always
by position, inferior: and to live familiarly with inferiors is
degrading. I now hate the recollection of the time I pas