“I am smiling at your impassioned arguments.”

“Would you like to be dressed like a man?”

“I was expecting something of the kind, but after you have said we can make no more objections.”

“I can imagine what you would say; I should certainly not take you for men, but I will say no more.”

They looked at each other, and blushed and smiled as they saw my gaze fixed on two pre-eminences which one would never expect to see in any man.  We began to talk of other things, and for two hours I enjoyed their lively and cultured conversation.

When I left them I went off to my apartments, then to the opera, where I lost two hundred sequins, and finally supped with the countess, who had become quite amiable.  However, she soon fell back into her old ways when she found that my politeness was merely external, and that I had no intentions whatever of troubling her in her bedroom again.

On the Saturday morning the young officer came to see me, and I told him that there was only one thing that I wanted him to do, but that it must be done exactly according to my instructions.  He promised to follow them to the letter, and I proceeded,—­

“You must get a carriage and four, and as soon as the five of you are in it tell the coachman to drive as fast as his horses can gallop out of Milan, and to bring you back again by another road to the house.  There you must get down, send the carriage away, after enjoining silence on the coachman, and come in.  After the ball you will undress in the same house, and then go home in sedan-chairs.  Thus we shall be able to baffle the inquisitive, who will be pretty numerous, I warn you.”

“My friend the marquis will see to all that,” said he, “and I promise you he will do it well, for he is longing to make your acquaintance.”

“I shall expect you, then, at seven o’clock to-morrow.

“Warn your friend that it is important the coachman should not be known, and do not let anybody bring a servant.”

All these arrangements being made, I determined to disguise myself as Pierrot.  There’s no disguise more perfect; for, besides concealing the features and the shape of the body, it does not even let the colour of the skin remain recognizable.  My readers may remember what happened to me in this disguise ten years before.  I made the tailor get me a new Pierrot costume, which I placed with the others, and with two new purses, in each of which I placed five hundred sequins, I repaired to the pastrycook’s before seven o’clock.  I found the table spread, and the supper ready.  I shut up Zenobia in the room where the ladies were to make their toilette, and at five minutes past seven the joyous company arrived.

The marquis was delighted to make my acquaintance, and I welcomed him as he deserved.  He was a perfect gentleman in every respect, handsome, rich, and young, very much in love with the pretty cousin whom he treated with great respect.  The lieutenant’s mistress was a delightful little lady and madly fond of her lover.