saw it also.  She was frightened, but I calmed her fears.  I then rose, and taking a roll containing fifty louis I begged her to keep them for me, promising to come for them in two years, and take them from her hands through the grating of her terrible prison.  She spent the last quarter of an hour in tears, and mine were only restrained lest I should add to her grief.  I cut off a piece of her fleece and a lock of her beautiful hair, promising her always to bear them next my heart.

I left her, telling the country-woman that she should see me again the next day, and I went to bed as soon as I got home.  Next morning I was on the way to Chamberi.  At a quarter of a league’s distance from Aix I saw my angel slowly walking along.  As soon as the lay-sisters were near enough they asked an alms in the name of God.  I gave them a Louis, but my saint did not look at me.

With a broken heart I went to the good countrywoman, who told me that M——­ M——­ had gone at day-break, bidding her to remind me of the convent grating.  I kissed the Worthy woman, and I gave her nephew all the loose silver I had about me, and returning to the inn I had my luggage put on to the carriage, and would have started that moment if I had had any horses.  But I had two hours to wait, and I went and bade the marquis farewell.  He was out, but his mistress was in the room by herself.  On my telling her of my departure, she said,

“Don’t go, stay with me a couple of days longer.”

“I feel the honour you are conferring on me, but business of the greatest importance obliges me to be gone forthwith.”

“Impossible,” said the lady, as she went to a glass the better to lace herself, shewing me a superb breast.  I saw her design, but I determined to baulk her.  She then put one foot upon a couch to retie her garter, and when she put up the other foot I saw beauties more enticing than Eve’s apple.  It was nearly all up with me, when the marquis came in.  He proposed a little game of quinze, and his mistress asked me to be her partner.  I could not escape; she sat next to me, and I had lost forty Louis by dinner-time.

“I owe you twenty,” said the lady, as we were going down.

At dessert Le Duc came to tell me that my carriage was at the door, and I got up, but under the pretence of paying me the twenty louis the marquis’s mistress made me come with her to her room.

When we were there she addressed me in a serious and supplicating voice, telling me that if I went she would be dishonoured, as everybody knew that she had engaged to make me stay.

“Do I look worthy of contempt?” said she, making me sit down upon the sofa.

Then with a repetition of her tactics in the morning she contrived that I should see everything.  Excited by her charms I praised her beauties, I kissed, I touched; she let herself fall on me, and looked radiant when her vagrant hand found palpable proof of her powers of attraction.