I was in my servant’s hands, my face turned away towards the fire, so that I could not see Esther, but only divert myself with the idea that she was inspecting my belongings, when all at once she presented herself with a melancholy air, holding Mamon’s fatal letter in her hand.

“Am I to blame,” said she, timidly, “for having discovered the cause of your sorrow?”

I felt rather taken aback, but looking kindly at her, I said,

“No, no, my dear Esther; pity your friend, and say no more about it.”

“Then I may read all the letters?”

“Yes, dearest, if it will amuse you.”

All the letters of the faithless Manon Baletti to me, with mine to her, were together on my table.  I pointed them out to Esther, who begun to read them quite eagerly.

When I was dressed, as if for some Court holiday, Le Duc went out and left us by ourselves, for the worthy governess, who was working at her lace by the window, looked at her lace, and nothing else.  Esther said that nothing had ever amused her so much as those letters.

“Those cursed epistles, which please you so well, will be the death of me.”

“Death?  Oh, no!  I will cure you, I hope.”

“I hope so, too; but after dinner you must help me to burn them all from first to last.”

“Burn them!  No; make me a present of them.  I promise to keep them carefully all my days.”

“They are yours, Esther.  I will send them to you to-morrow.”

These letters were more than two hundred in number, and the shortest were four pages in length.  She was enchanted to find herself the possessor of the letters, and she said she would make them into a parcel and take them away herself.

“Shall you send back the portrait to your faithless mistress?” said she.

“I don’t know what to do with it.”

“Send it back to her; she is not worthy of your honouring her by keeping it.  I am sure that your oracle would give you the same advice.  Where is the portrait?  Will you shew it me?”

I had the portrait in the interior of a gold snuff-box, but I had never shewn it to Esther for fear she should think Manon handsomer than herself, and conclude that I only shewd it her out of vanity; but as she now asked to see it I opened the box where it was and gave it her.

Any other woman besides Esther would have pronounced Manon downright ugly, or have endeavored at the least to find some fault with her, but Esther pronounced her to be very beautiful, and only said it was a great pity so fair a body contained so vile a soul.

The sight of Manon’s portrait made Esther ask to see all the other portraits which Madame Manzoni had sent me from Venice.  There were naked figures amongst them, but Esther was too pure a spirit to put on the hateful affectations of the prude, to whom everything natural is an abomination.  O-Murphy pleased her very much, and her history, which I related, struck her as very curious.  The portrait of the fair nun, M——­ M——­, first in the habit of her order and afterwards naked, made her laugh, but I would not tell Esther her story, in spite of the lively desire she displayed to hear it.