Play
and its effects, the orgies that precede, the excesses that follow,
were the life of Edoardo. Waste and debt were the consequences; and
when he had, under a thousand pretences, extorted from his father all
the money he could, he began, on arriving in Padua, to apply to
Sophia, whom he neglected, at least did not see as often as he might,
though he still loved her. Sophia was as indulgent as he was
indiscreet. At every fatal request for money, she offered him double
the sum he had asked. When Edoardo began to tell her some feigned
story, to conceal the shameful source of his wants, and to give her
an account of how he had employed those sums, she would not listen to
him.
'Why,' said she, 'should I demand an account of your actions? Why
should I think over and debate what you have already considered? Will
not all you have be one day mine? Shall we not be one day man and
wife?' And these words took away from Edoardo every sense of remorse:
conscience ceased to reproach him for the baseness of despoiling that
poor girl of the little she possessed.
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