proposed to mean arrangement common enough at Venice, which was to keep
one girl for us both. To this I consented. The question was, to find
one who was safe. He was so industrious in his researches that he found
out a little girl from eleven to twelve years of age, whom her infamous
mother was endeavoring to sell, and I went with Carrio to see her. The
sight of the child moved me to the most lively compassion. She was fair
and as gentle as a lamb. Nobody would have taken her for an Italian.
Living is very cheap in Venice; we gave a little money to the mother, and
provided for the subsistence of her daughter. She had a voice, and to
procure her some resource we gave her a spinnet, and a singing--master.
All these expenses did not cost each of us more than two sequins a month,
and we contrived to save a much greater sum in other matters; but as we
were obliged to wait until she became of a riper age, this was sowing a
long time before we could possibly reap. However, satisfied with passing
our evenings, chatting and innocently playing with the child, we perhaps
enjoyed greater pleasure than if we had received the last favors. So
true is it that men are more attached to women by a certain pleasure they
have in living with them, than by any kind of libertinism. My heart
became insensibly attached to the little Anzoletta, but my attachment was
paternal, in which the senses had so little share, that in proportion as
the former increased, to have connected it with the latter would have
been less possible; and I felt I should have experienced, at approaching
this little creature when become nubile, the same horror with which the
abominable crime of incest would have inspired me. I perceived the
sentiments of Carrio take, unobserved by himself, exactly the same turn.
We thus prepared for ourselves, without intending it, pleasure not less
delicious, but very different from that of which we first had an idea;
and I am fully persuaded that however beautiful the poor child might have
become, far from being the corrupters of her innocence we should have
been the protectors of it. The circumstance which shortly afterwards