Her cloak and mask were on the bed, but she was dressed as a nun.  As I wanted to see her face, I politely asked her to do me the favour of shewing it.

“I don’t know you,” said she; “who are you?”

“You are in my house, and don’t know who I am?”

“I am in your house because I have been betrayed.  I did not think that I should have to do with a scoundrel.”

At this word Murray commanded her to be silent, calling her by the name of her honourable business; and the slut got up to take her cloak, saying she would go.  Murray pushed her back, and told her that she would have to wait for her worthy friend, warning her to make no noise if she wanted to keep out of prison.

“Put me in prison!”

With this she directed her hand towards her dress, but I rushed forward and seized one hand while Murray mastered the other.  We pushed her back on a chair while we possessed ourselves of the pistols she carried in her pockets.

Murray tore away the front of her holy habit, and I extracted a stiletto eight inches long, the false nun weeping bitterly all the time.

“Will you hold your tongue, and keep quiet till Capsucefalo comes,” said the ambassador, “or go to prison?”

“If I keep quiet what will become of me?”

“I promise to let you go.”

“With him?”

“Perhaps.”

“Very well, then, I will keep quiet.”

“Have you got any more weapons?”

Hereupon the slut took off her habit and her petticoat, and if we had allowed her she would have soon been in a state of nature, no doubt in the expectation of our passions granting what our reason refused.  I was much astonished to find in her only a false resemblance to M.M.  I remarked as much to the ambassador, who agreed with me, but made me confess that most men, prepossessed with the idea that they were going to see M. M., would have fallen into the same trap.  In fact, the longing to possess one’s self of a nun who has renounced all the pleasures of the world, and especially that of cohabitation with the other sex, is the very apple of Eve, and is more delightful from the very difficulty of penetrating the convent grating.

Few of my readers will fail to testify that the sweetest pleasures are those which are hardest to be won, and that the prize, to obtain which one would risk one’s life, would often pass unnoticed if it were freely offered without difficulty or hazard.

In the following chapter, dear reader, you will see the end of this farcical adventure.  In the mean time, let us take a little breath.

CHAPTER XXIV

Pleasant Ending of the Adventure of the False Nun—­M.  M. Finds Out That I Have d Mistress—­She is Avenged on the Wretch Capsucefalo—­I Ruin Myself at Play, and at the Suggestion of M. M. I Sell all Her Diamonds, One After Another—­I Hand Over Tonine to Murray, Who Makes Provision for Her—­Her Sister Barberine Takes Her Place.