I discovered that evening that I had, by the fortune of war, become the
property of a Russian general, who had no time for making love. With him
it was all ready made, as a matter of course. Still he was a handsome
man, and when not tipsy, was good-humoured and generous; but the
bivouacs, even of a general, were very different from the luxuries to
which I had been accustomed. I lived badly, and was housed worse. It so
unfortunately happened, that my protector was a great gambler, as indeed
are all Russians; and one morning, to my surprise, a handsome young
officer came into the tent and the general very unceremoniously handed
me over to him. My beauty had been made known in the camp, and the
Russian general, having the night before lost all his money, had staked
me for one thousand sequins, and had lost. My new master was a careless,
handsome youth, a colonel in the army; I could have loved him, but I had
not time; for I had not been in his tent more than three weeks, before I
was again gambled away, and lost to a major. I had hardly time to make
myself comfortable in my new abode, when I was staked and lost again. In
short, your highness, in that campaign I was the property of between
forty and fifty Russian officers, and what with the fatigue of marching,
the badness of provisions, and my constant unsettled state of mind and
body, I lost much of my good looks--so much, indeed, that I found out
that instead of being taken as a stake of one thousand sequins, I was
not valued at more than two hundred.
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