I loathe your ready-made and ripened courtesans; it is in the soft and unconscious progress of innocence to desire that I find the true charm of love; it is thus that I defy satiety; and by contemplating the freshness of others, I sustain the freshness of my own sensations.

From the young hearts of my victims I draw the ingredients of the caldron in which I re-youth myself.

But enough of this: to the subject before us.

You know, then, that in Neapolis some time since I encountered Ione and Apaecides, brother and sister, the children of Athenians who had settled at Neapolis.

The death of their parents, who knew and esteemed me, constituted me their guardian.