"I admire," he said, "the way in which your easily persuaded and confiding heart has clung so long to such a character. It is true that nature has endowed him with irresistible fascinations, and that he is extraordinarily skilful in concealing his villainy and assuming the outward appearance of loyalty. All the cities in Europe know him for a delightful rake. Only a very few persons in Italy know that he is capable of any villainy to gratify his innumerable whims. To-day you will see him take Lovelace for his model, to-morrow the shepherd Fido. As he is something of a poet, he is capable of receiving all sorts of impressions, of understanding and mimicking all the virtues, of studying and playing all varieties of rôles. He believes that he really feels all that he imitates, and sometimes he identifies himself so thoroughly with the character he has chosen, that he feels its passions and grasps its grandeur. But, as he is vile and corrupt at bottom, as there is nothing in him save affectation and caprice, vice suddenly springs to life in his blood, the tedium of his hypocrisy drives him into habits directly contrary to those which seemed natural to him. They who have seen him only in one of his deceptive disguises are amazed and think he has gone mad; they who know that it is his nature to be true in nothing, smile and wait quietly for some fresh invention." Although this shocking portrait revolted me so that I was almost suffocated, yet it seemed to me that I saw in it some shafts of blinding light. I was struck dumb, my nerves contracted. I looked at Chalm with a terror-stricken expression; he congratulated himself on his success and continued: