r, that if I chose I had
an easy conquest before me.

I guessed the latter circumstance one day when, after I had asked her to
tell me her adventures from the age of eleven to that of eighteen, she
proceeded to tell me tales, the telling of which necessitated her
throwing all modesty to the winds.

I took the utmost delight in these scandalous narrations, and whenever I
thought she had told the whole truth I gave her a few pieces of money;
while whenever I had reason to suppose that she had suppressed some
interesting circumstances I gave her nothing.

She confessed to me that she no longer possessed that which a maid can
lose but once, that a friend of hers named Buonacorsi was in the same
case, and finally she told me the name of the young man who had relieved
them both of their maidenheads.

We had for neighbor a young Piedmontese abbe named Ceruti, on whom
Margarita was obliged to wait when her mother was too busy. I jested with
her about him, but she swore there was no lovemaking between them.

This abbe was a fine man, learned and witty, but he was overwhelmed with
debt and in very bad odour at Rome on account of an extremely unpleasant
story of which he was the hero.

They said that he had told an Englishman, who was in love with Princess
Lanti, that she was in want of two hundred sequins, that the Englishman
had handed over the money to the abbe, and that the latter had
appropriated it.

This act of meanness had been brought to light by an explanation between
the lady and the Englishman. On his saying to the princess that he was
ready to do anything for her, and that the two hundred sequins he had
given her were as nothing in comparison with what he was ready to do, she
indignantly denied all knowledge of the transaction. Everything came out.
The Englishman begged pardon, and the abbe was excluded from the
princess's house and the Englishman's also.

This Abbe Ceruti was one of those journalists employed to write the
weekly news of Rome by Bianconi; he and I had in a manner become friends
since we were neighbours. I saw that he loved Margarita, and I was not in
the least jealous, but as he was a handsome young fellow I could not
believe that Margarita was cruel to him. Nevertheless, she assured me
that she detested him, and that she was very sorry that her mother made
her wait on him at all.

Ceruti had already laid himself under obligations to me. He had borrowed
a score of crowns from me, promising