It was seven o’clock when we began our journey home, which we reached at midnight.  The journey was so pleasant that it seemed to us but short.  The champagne, the punch, and the pleasure, had warmed my two fair companions, and by favour of the darkness I was able to amuse myself with them, though I loved Clementine too well to carry matters very far with her sister.

When we alighted we wished each other good night, and everybody retired to his or her room, myself excepted, for I spent several happy hours with Clementine, which I can never forget.

“Do you think,” said she, “that I shall be happy when you have left me all alone?”

“Dearest Hebe, both of us will be unhappy for the first few days, but then philosophy will step in and soften the bitterness of parting without lessening our love.”

“Soften the bitterness!  I do not think any philosophy can work such a miracle.  I know that you, dear sophist, will soon console yourself with other girls.  Don’t think me jealous; I should abhor myself if I thought I was capable of so vile a passion, but I should despise myself if I was capable of seeking consolation in your way.”

“I shall be in despair if you entertain such ideas of me.”

“They are natural, however.”

“Possibly.  What you call ‘other girls’ can never expel your image from my breast.  The chief of them is the wife of a tailor, and the other is a respectable young woman, whom I am going to take back to Marseilles, whence she has been decoyed by her wretched seducer.

“From henceforth to death, you and you alone will reign in my breast; and if, led astray by my senses, I ever press another in these arms, I shall soon be punished for an act of infidelity in which my mind will have no share.”

“I at all events will never need to repent in that fashion.  But I cannot understand how, with your love for me, and holding me in your arms, you can even contemplate the possibility of becoming unfaithful to me.”

“I don’t contemplate it, dearest, I merely take it as an hypothesis.”

“I don’t see much difference.”

What reply could I make?  There was reason in what Clementine said, though she was deceived, but her mistakes were due to her love.  My love was so ardent as to be blind to possible—­nay, certain, infidelities.  The only circumstance which made me more correct in my estimate of the future than she, was that this was by no means my first love affair.  But if my readers have been in the same position, as I suppose mast of them have, they will understand how difficult it is to answer such arguments coming from a woman one wishes to render happy.  The keenest wit has to remain silent and to take refuge in kisses.

“Would you like to take me away with you?” said she, “I am ready to follow you, and it would make me happy.  If you love me, you ought to be enchanted for your own sake.  Let us make each other happy, dearest.”