. 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 Céline 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, 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 Céline, 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 -