When the actor who thought it was a joke, made his appearance, she could hardly utter a word, for evil pleasure is as intoxicating as adulterated liquor, so face to face with this immediate surrender, and this unconstrained immodesty, he at first thought that he had to do with a street walker.

Regina felt various sensations, and a morbid pleasure throughout her whole person.  She pressed close to him, and raised her veil to show how young, beautiful, and desirable she was.  They did not speak a word, like wrestlers before a combat.  She was eager to be locked up with him, to give herself to him, and, at last, to know that moral uncleanness, of which, she was, of course, ignorant, as a chaste wife; and when they left the room in the hotel together, where they had spent hours like amorous deer, the man dragged himself along, and almost groped his way like a blind man, while Regina was smiling, though nevertheless, she retained her serene candor of an unsullied virgin, like she did almost always on Sundays, after mass.

Then she took the second.  He was very sentimental, and his head was full of romance.  He thought the unknown woman, who merely used him as her plaything, really loved him, and he was not satisfied with furtive meetings.  He questioned her, besought her, and the Countess made fun of him.  Then she chose the two Mountebanks in turn.  They did not know it, for she had forbidden them ever to talk about her to each other, under the penalty of never seeing her again, and one night the younger of them said with humble tenderness, as he knelt at her feet: 

“How kind you are, to love and to want me!  I thought that such happiness only existed in novels, and that ladies of rank only made fun of poor strolling Mountebanks, like us!”

Regina knitted her golden brows.

“Do not be angry,” he continued, “because I followed you and found out where you lived, and your real name, and that you are a countess, and rich, very rich.”

“You fool!” she exclaimed, trembling with anger.  “People would make you believe things, as easily as they would a child!”

She had had enough of him; he knew her name, and might compromise her.  The Count might possibly come back from the country before the elections, and then, the Mountebank began to love her.  She no longer had any feeling, any desire for those two lovers, whom a fillip from her rosy fingers could bend to her will.  It was time to go on to the next chapter, and to seek for fresh pleasures elsewhere.

“Listen to me,” she said to the champion shot, the next night.  “I would rather not hide anything from you.  I like your comrade; I have given myself to him, and I do not want to have anything more to do with you.”

“My comrade!” he repeated.

“Well, what then?  The change amuses me!”

He uttered a furious cry, and rushed at Regina with clenched fists.  She thought he was going to kill her, and closed her eyes, but he had not the courage to hurt that delicate body, which he had so often covered with caresses, and in despair, and hanging his head, he said hoarsely: