She was elegantly dressed in the prevalent fashion, with large hoops, and like the daughters of the nobility who have not yet attained the age of puberty, although the young countess was marriageable.  I had never dared to stare so openly at the bosom of a young lady of quality, but I thought there was no harm in fixing my eyes on a spot where there was nothing yet but in expectation.

The count, after having exchanged a few words in German with his wife, presented me in the most flattering manner, and I was received with great politeness.  The major joined us, deeming it his duty to escort the countess all over the fortress, and I improved the excellent opportunity thrown in my way by the inferiority of my position; I offered my arm to the young lady, and the count left us to go to his room.

I was still an adept in the old Venetian fashion of attending upon ladies, and the young countess thought me rather awkward, though I believed myself very fashionable when I placed my hand under her arm, but she drew it back in high merriment.  Her mother turned round to enquire what she was laughing at, and I was terribly confused when I heard her answer that I had tickled her.

“This is the way to offer your arm to a lady,” she said, and she passed her hand through my arm, which I rounded in the most clumsy manner, feeling it a very difficult task to resume a dignified countenance.  Thinking me a novice of the most innocent species, she very likely determined to make sport of me.  She began by remarking that by rounding my arm as I had done I placed it too far from her waist, and that I was consequently out of drawing.  I told her I did not know how to draw, and inquired whether it was one of her accomplishments.

“I am learning,” she answered, “and when you call upon us I will shew you Adam and Eve, after the Chevalier Liberi; I have made a copy which has been found very fine by some professors, although they did not know it was my work.”

“Why did you not tell them?”

“Because those two figures are too naked.”

“I am not curious to see your Adam, but I will look at your Eve with pleasure, and keep your secret.”

This answer made her laugh again, and again her mother turned round.  I put on the look of a simpleton, for, seeing the advantage I could derive from her opinion of me, I had formed my plan at the very moment she tried to teach me how to offer my arm to a lady.

She was so convinced of my simplicity that she ventured to say that she considered her Adam by far more beautiful than her Eve, because in her drawing of the man she had omitted nothing, every muscle being visible, while there was none conspicuous in Eve.  “It is,” she added, “a figure with nothing in it.”

“Yet it is the one which I shall like best.”

“No; believe me, Adam will please you most.”