The country-woman came in at that moment, and gave her the abbess’ letter which her nephew had just brought from Chamberi.  She read it and gave it to me.  The abbess told her that she would send two lay-sisters to bring her back to the convent, and that as she had recovered her health she could come on-foot, and thus save money which could be spent in better ways.  She added that as the bishop was away, and she was unable to send the lay-sisters without his permission, they could not start for a week or ten days.  She ordered her, under pain of the major excommunication, never to leave her room, never to speak to any man, not even to the master of the house, and to have nothing to do with anybody except with the woman.  She ended by saying that she was going to have a mass said for the repose of the departed sister’s soul.

“I am obliged to you for having shewn me this letter, but be pleased to tell me if I may visit you for the next week or ten days, without doing hurt to your conscience; for I must tell you I am a man.  I have only stopped in this place because of the lively interest with which you have inspired me, but if you have the least objection to receive me on account of the singular excommunication with which you are threatened, I will leave Aix tomorrow.  Speak.”

“Sir, our abbess is lavish of these thunders, and I have already incurred the excommunication with which she threatens me; but I hope it will not be ratified by God, as my fault has made me happy and not miserable.  I will be sincere with you; your visits are my only joy, and that joy is doubled when you tell me you like to come.  But if you can answer my question without a breach of confidence, I should like to know for whom you took me the first time you saw me; you cannot imagine how you astonished and frightened me.  I have never felt such kisses as those you lavished on me, but they cannot increase my sin as I was not a consenting party, and you told me yourself that you thought you were kissing another.”

“I will satisfy your curiosity.  I think I can do so as you are aware by this time that the flesh is weak, or rather stronger than the spirit, and that it compels the strongest intellects to commit faults against right reason.  You shall hear the history of an amour that lasted for two years with the fairest and the best of all the nuns of Venice.”

“Tell me all, sir.  I have fallen myself, and I should be cruel and unjust if I were to take offence at anything you may tell me, for you cannot have done anything with her that Coudert did not do to me.”

“I did much more and much less, for I never gave her a child.  If I had been so unfortunate I should have carried her off to Rome, where we should have fallen at the feet of the Holy Father, who would have absolved her from her vows, and my dear M——­ M——­ would now be my wife.”

“Good heavens M——­ M——­ is my name.”

This circumstance, which was really a mere coincidence, rendered our meeting still more wonderful, and astonished me as much as it did her.  Chance is a curious and fickle element, but it often has the greatest influence on our lives.