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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.