“The beauty of your bosom,” I added, “makes me take a still greater interest in you.”

So saying I let my mouth meet hers, and I felt a kiss escape as if involuntarily from her lips.  It ran like fire through my veins, my brain began to whirl, and I saw that unless I took to a speedy flight I should lose all her confidence.  I therefore left her, calling her “dear daughter” as I bade her farewell.

It poured with rain, and I got soaked through before I reached my lodging.  This was a bath well fitted to diminish the ardour of my passion, but it made me very late in rising the next morning.

I took out the two portraits of M——­ M——­, one in a nun’s dress, and the other nude, as Venus.  I felt sure they would be of service to me with the nun.

I did not find the fair Zeroli in her room, so I went to the fountain, where she reproached me with a tenderness I assessed at its proper value, and our quarrel was made up in the course of our walk.  When dinner was over the Marquis the Prie made a bank, but as he only put down a hundred louis I guessed that he wanted to win a lot and lose a little.  I put down also a hundred louis, and he said that it would be better sport if I did not stake my money on one card only.  I replied that I would stake a louis on each of the thirteen.

“You will lose.”

“We will see.  Here is my hand on the table, and I stake a louis on each of the thirteen cards.”

According to the laws of probability, I should certainly have lost, but fate decided otherwise and I won eighty louis.  At eight o’clock I bowed to the company, and I went as usual to the place where my new love dwelt.  I found the invalid ravishing.  She said she had had a little fever, which the country-woman pronounced to be milk fever, and that she would be quite well and ready to get up by the next day.  As I stretched out my hand to lift the coverlet; she seized it and covered it with kisses, telling me that she felt as if she must give me that mark of her filial affection.  She was twenty-one, and I was thirty-five.  A nice daughter for a man like me!  My feelings for her were not at all of a fatherly character.  Nevertheless, I told her that her confidence in me, as shewn by her seeing me in bed, increased my affection for her, and that I should be grieved if I found her dressed in her nun’s clothes next day.

“Then I will stop in bed,” said she; “and indeed I shall be very glad to do so, as I experience great discomfort from the heat of my woollen habit; but I think I should please you more if I were decently dressed; however, as you like it better, I will stop in bed.”