To these answers, which brought the tears into her eyes, she one morning answered maliciously, that Mademoiselle de Montmorency was very lovely and very faithful.  This speech forced l’Ile Adam to tell her that she pained him by telling him of the only wrong he had ever committed in his life—­the breaking of the troth pledged to his first sweetheart, all love for whom he had since effaced from his heart.  This candid speech made her seize him and clasp him to her heart, affected at the loyalty of his discourse on a subject from which many would have shrunk.

“My dear love,” said she, “for a long time past I have been suffering from a retraction of the heart, which has always since my youth been dangerous to my life, and in this opinion the Arabian physician coincides.  If I die, I wish you to make the most binding oath a knight can make, to wed Mademoiselle Montmorency.  I am so certain of dying, that I leave my property to you only on condition that this marriage takes place.”

Hearing this, l’Ile Adam turned pale, and felt faint at the mere thought of an eternal separation from his good wife.

“Yes, dear treasure of love,” continued she.  “I am punished by God there where my sins were committed, for the great joys that I feel dilate my heart, and have, according to the Arabian doctor, weakened the vessels which in a moment of excitement will burst; but I have always implored God to take my life at the age in which I now am, because I would not see my charms marred by the ravages of time.”

This great and noble woman saw then how well she was beloved.  This is how she obtained the greatest sacrifice of love that ever was made upon this earth.  She alone knew what a charm existed in the embraces, fondlings, and raptures of the conjugal bed, which were such that poor l’Ile Adam would rather have died than allow himself to be deprived of the amorous delicacies she knew so well how to prepare.  At this confession made by her that, in the excitement of love her heart would burst, the chevalier cast himself at her knees, and declared that to preserve her life he would never ask her for love, but would live contented to see her only at his side, happy at being able to touch but the hem of her garment.

She replied, bursting into tears, “that she would rather die than lose one iota of his love; that she would die as she had lived, since luckily she could make a man embrace her when such was her desire without having to put her request into words.”

Here it must be stated that the cardinal of Ragusa had given her as a present an article, which this holy joker called in articulo mortis.  It was a tiny glass bottle, no bigger than a bean, made at Venice, and containing a poison so subtle that by breaking it between the teeth death came instantly and painlessly.  He had received it from Signora Tophana, the celebrated maker of poisons of the town of Rome.