“Wonderful!  I couldn’t have believed it!”

I took off the sheath, and gave her another, which pleased her better, as it seemed to fit me better, and she laughed for joy as she put it on.  She knew nothing of these wonders.  Her thoughts had been bound in chains, and she could not discover the truth before she knew me; but though she was scarcely out of Egypt she shewed all the eagerness of an enquiring and newly emancipated spirit.  “But how if the rubbing makes the sheath fall off?” said she.  I explained to her that such an accident could scarcely happen, and also told her of what material the English made these articles.

After all this talking, of which my ardour began to weary, we abandoned ourselves to love, then to sleep, then to love again, and so on alternately till day-break.  As I was leaving, the woman of the house told us that the painter had asked four louis, and that she had give two louis to her foster-son.  I gave her twelve, and went home, where I slept till morn, without thinking of breakfasting with the Marquis de Prie, but I think I should have given him some notice of my inability to come.  His mistress sulked with me all dinner-time, but softened when I allowed myself to be persuaded into making a bank.  However, I found she was playing for heavy stakes, and I had to check her once or twice, which made her so cross that she went to hide her ill-temper in a corner of the hall.  However, the marquis won, and I was losing, when the taciturn Duke of Rosebury, his tutor Smith, and two of his fellow-countrymen, arrived from Geneva.  He came up to me and said, “How do you do?” and without another word began to play, inviting his companions to follow his example.

Seeing my bank in the last agony I sent Le Duc to my room for the cash-box, whence I drew out five rolls of a hundred louis each.  The Marquis de Prie said, coolly, that he wouldn’t mind being my partner, and in the same tone I begged to be excused.  He continued punting without seeming to be offended at my refusal and when I put down the cards and rose from the table he had won two hundred louis; but all the others had lost, especially one of the Englishmen, so that I had made a profit of a thousand louis.  The marquis asked me if I would give him chocolate in my room next morning, and I replied that I should be glad to see him.  I replaced my cash-box in my room, and proceeded to the cottage, pleased with the day’s work and feeling inclined to crown it with love.

I found my fair friend looking somewhat sad, and on my enquiring the reason she told me that a nephew of the country-woman’s, who had come from Chamberi that morning, had told her that he had heard from a lay-sister of the same convent, whom he knew, that two sisters would start at day-break in two days’ time to fetch her; this sad news, she said, had made her tears flow fast.

“But the abbess said the sisters could not start before ten days had expired.”