While the unhappy alchymist was undergoing his trial at the
inquisition, his daughter was exposed to trials no less severe. Don
Ambrosio, into whose hands she had fallen, was, as has before been
intimated, one of the most daring and lawless profligates in all
Granada. He was a man of hot blood and fiery passions, who stopped at
nothing in the gratification of his desires; yet with all this he
possessed manners, address, and accomplishments, that had made him
eminently successful among the sex. From the palace to the cottage he
had extended his amorous enterprises; his serenades harassed the
slumbers of half the husbands in Granada; no balcony was too high for
his adventurous attempts, nor any cottage too lowly for his perfidious
seductions. Yet he was as fickle as he was ardent; success had made
him vain and capricious; he had no sentiment to attach him to the
victim of his arts; and many a pale cheek and fading eye, languishing
amidst the sparkling of jewels, and many a breaking heart, throbbing
under the rustic bodice, bore testimony to his triumphs and his
faithlessness.
He was sated, however, by easy conquests, and wearied of a life of
continual and prompt gratification. There had been a degree of
difficulty and enterprise in the pursuit of Inez that he had never
before experienced.
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