"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 passed with Celine, Giacinta, and Clara."
I felt the truth of these words; and I drew from them the certain
inference, that if I were so far to forget myself and all the
teaching that had ever been instilled into me, as--under any
pretext--with any justification--through any temptation--to become
the successor of these poor girls, he would one day regard me with
the same feeling which now in his mind desecrated their memory. I
did not give utterance to this conviction: it was enough to feel
it. I impressed it on my heart, that it might remain there to serve
me as aid in the time of trial.
"Now, Jane, why don't you say 'Well, sir?' I have not done. You
are looking grave. You disapprove of me still, I see. But let me
come to the point. Last January, rid of all mistresses--in a harsh,
bitter frame of mind, the result of a useless, roving, lonely life--
corroded with disappointment, sourly disposed against all men, and
especially against all womankind (for I began to regard the notion
of an intellectual, faithful, loving woman as a mere dream),
recalled by business, I came back to England.