the assault, and taking her hand he kissed it again and again.  She tried to draw it away, and as she rose he put his arm round her waist and made her sit down on his knee; but at this point the husband took her arm and led her out of the room.  The attacking party looked rather taken aback for a moment as he followed her with his eyes, but sat down again and began to eat and laugh afresh, while everybody else kept a profound silence.  He then turned to the footman behind his chair and asked him if his sword was upstairs.  The footman said no, and then the fatuous young man turned to an abbe who sat near me, and enquired who had taken away his mistress: 

“It was her husband,” said the abbe.

“Her husband!  Oh, that’s another thing; husbands don’t fight—­a man of honour always apologises to them.”

With that he got up, went upstairs, and came down again directly, saying,—­

“The husband’s a fool.  He shut the door in my face, and told me to satisfy my desires somewhere else.  It isn’t worth the trouble of stopping, but I wish I had made an end of it.”

He then called for champagne, offered it vainly to everybody, bade the company a polite farewell and went upon his way.

As M. Grimaldi escorted me to my room he asked me what I had thought of the scene we had just witnessed.  I told him I would not have stirred a finger, even if he had turned up her clothes.

“No more would I,” said he, “but if she had accepted my hundred louis it would have been different.  I am curious to know the further history of this siren, and I rely upon you to tell me all about it as you go through Genoa.”

He went away at day-break next morning.

When I got up I received a note from the false Astrodi, asking me if I expected her and her great chum to supper.  I had scarcely replied in the affirmative, when the sham Duke of Courland I had left at Grenoble appeared on the scene.  He confessed in a humble voice that he was the son of clock-maker at Narva, that his buckles were valueless, and that he had come to beg an alms of me.  I gave him four Louis, and he asked me to keep his secret.  I replied that if anyone asked me about him that I should say what was absolutely true, that I knew him nothing about him.  “Thank you; I am now going to Marseilles.”  “I hope you will have a prosperous journey.”  Later on my readers will hear how I found him at Genoa.  It is a good thing to know something about people of his kind, of whom there are far too many in the world.

I called up the landlord and told him I wanted a delicate supper for three in my own room.

He told me that I should have it, and then said, “I have just had a row with the Chevalier Stuard.”

“What about?”

“Because he has nothing to pay me with, and I am going to turn them out immediately, although the lady is in bed in convulsions which are suffocating her.”

“Take out your bill in her charms.”