The honest Hungarian insisted upon giving me in advance the amount to be paid for the post-horses at the different stages as far as Parma.  We left Cesena after dinner, but not without a contest of politeness respecting the seats.  The captain wanted me to occupy the back seat-near Henriette, but the reader will understand how much better the seat opposite to her suited me; therefore I insisted upon taking the bracket-seat, and had the double advantage of shewing my politeness, and of having constantly and without difficulty before my eyes the lovely woman whom I adored.

My happiness would have been too great if there had been no drawback to it.  But where can we find roses without thorns?  When the charming Frenchwoman uttered some of those witty sayings which proceed so naturally from the lips of her countrywomen, I could not help pitying the sorry face of the poor Hungarian, and, wishing to make him share my mirth, I would undertake to translate in Latin Henriette’s sallies; but far from making him merry, I often saw his face bear a look of astonishment, as if what I had said seemed to him rather flat.  I had to acknowledge to myself that I could not speak Latin as well as she spoke French, and this was indeed the case.  The last thing which we learn in all languages is wit, and wit never shines so well as in jests.  I was thirty years of age before I began to laugh in reading Terence, Plautus and Martial.

Something being the matter with the carriage, we stopped at Forli to have it repaired.  After a very cheerful supper, I retired to my room to go to bed, thinking of nothing else but the charming woman by whom I was so completely captivated.  Along the road, Henriette had struck me as so strange that I would not sleep in the second bed in their room.  I was afraid lest she should leave her old comrade to come to my bed and sleep with me, and I did not know how far the worthy captain would have put up with such a joke.  I wished, of course, to possess that lovely creature, but I wanted everything to be settled amicably, for I felt some respect for the brave officer.

Henriette had nothing but the military costume in which she stood, not any woman’s linen, not even one chemise.  For a change she took the captain’s shirt.  Such a state of things was so new to me that the situation seemed to me a complete enigma.

In Bologna, excited by an excellent supper and by the amorous passion which was every hour burning more fiercely in me, I asked her by what singular adventure she had become the friend of the honest fellow who looked her father rather than her lover.

“If you wish to know,” she answered, with a smile, “ask him to relate the whole story himself, only you must request him not to omit any of the particulars.”

Of course I applied at once to the captain, and, having first ascertained by signs that the charming Frenchwoman had no objection, the good man spoke to me thus: