I bethought myself of paying my court to the prince, and he received my advances very well.  One morning, as I called on Coraline, he said to me,

“Ah!  I am very glad to see you, for I have promised the Duchess of Rufe to present you to her, and we can go to her immediately.”

Again a duchess!  My star is decidedly in the ascendant.  Well, let us go!  We got into a ‘diable’, a sort of vehicle then very fashionable, and at eleven o’clock in the morning we were introduced to the duchess.

Dear reader, if I were to paint it with a faithful pen, my portrait of that lustful vixen would frighten you.  Imagine sixty winters heaped upon a face plastered with rouge, a blotched and pimpled complexion, emaciated and gaunt features, all the ugliness of libertinism stamped upon the countenance of that creature relining upon the sofa.  As soon as she sees me, she exclaims with rapid joy,

“Ah! this is a good-looking man!  Prince, it is very amiable on your part to bring him to me.  Come and sit near me, my fine fellow!”

I obeyed respectfully, but a noxious smell of musk, which seemed to me almost corpse-like, nearly upset me.  The infamous duchess had raised herself on the sofa and exposed all the nakedness of the most disgusting bosom, which would have caused the most courageous man to draw back.  The prince, pretending to have some engagement, left us, saying that he would send his carriage for me in a short time.

As soon as we were alone, the plastered skeleton thrust its arms forward, and, without giving me time to know what I was about, the creature gave me a horrible kiss, and then one of her hands began to stray with the most bare-faced indecency.

“Let me see, my fine cock,” she said, “if you have a fine . . .”

I was shuddering, and resisted the attempt.

“Well, well!  What a baby you are!” said the disgusting Messaline; “are you such a novice?”

“No, madam; but....”

“But what?”

“I have....”

“Oh, the villain!” she exclaimed, loosing her hold; “what was I going to expose myself to!”

I availed myself of the opportunity, snatched my hat, and took to my heels, afraid lest the door-keeper should stop me.

I took a coach and drove to Coraline’s, where I related the adventure.  She laughed heartily, and agreed with me that the prince had played me a nasty trick.  She praised the presence of mind with which I had invented an impediment, but she did not give me an opportunity of proving to her that I had deceived the duchess.

Yet I was not without hope, and suspected that she did not think me sufficiently enamoured of her.

Three or four days afterwards, however, as we had supper together and alone, I told her so many things, and I asked her so clearly to make me happy or else to dismiss me, that she gave me an appointment for the next day.

“To-morrow,” she said, “the prince goes to Versailles, and he will not return until the day after; we will go together to the warren to hunt ferrets, and have no doubt we shall come back to Paris pleased with one another.”