I went to the house at nine o’clock, and was welcomed as an unexpected guest.  I told Redegonde that I was glad to meet her, and she replied that she had not hoped to have the pleasure of seeing me.  Redegonde was the only one who had any appetite; she ate capitally, and laughed merrily at the stories I told her.

After supper Therese asked her if she would like to have a sedan-chair sent for, or if she would prefer to be taken back in my carriage.

“If the gentleman will be so kind,” said she, “I need not send for a chair.”

I thought this reply of such favourable omen that I no longer doubted of my success.  After she had wished the others good night, she took my arm, pressing it as she did so; we went down the stairs, and she got into the carriage.  I got in after her, and on attempting to sit down I found the place taken.

“Who is that?” I cried.

Redegonde burst out laughing, and informed me it was her mother.

I was done; I could not summon up courage to pass it off as a jest.  Such a shock makes a man stupid; for a moment it numbs all the mental faculties, and wounded self-esteem only gives place to anger.

I sat down on the front seat and coldly asked the mother why she had not come up to supper with us.  When the carriage stopped at their door, she asked me to come in, but I told her I would rather not.  I felt that for a little more I would have boxed her ears, and the man at the house door looked very like a cut-throat.

I felt enraged and excited physically as well as mentally, and though I had never been to see the Corticelli, told the coachman to drive there immediately, as I felt sure of finding her well disposed.  Everybody was gone to bed.  I knocked at the door till I got an answer, I gave my name, and I was let in, everything being in total darkness.  The mother told me she would light a candle, and that if she had expected me she would have waited up in spite of the cold.  I felt as if I were in the middle of an iceberg.  I heard the girl laughing, and going up to the bed and passing my hand over it I came across some plain tokens of the masculine gender.  I had got hold of her brother.  In the meanwhile the mother had got a candle, and I saw the girl with the bedclothes up to her chin, for, like her brother, she was as naked as my hand.  Although no Puritan, I was shocked.

“Why do you allow this horrible union?” I said to the mother.

“What harm is there?  They are brother and sister.”

“That’s just what makes it a criminal matter.”

“Everything is perfectly innocent.”

“Possibly; but it’s not a good plan.”

The pathic escaped from the bed and crept into his mother’s, while the little wanton told me there was really no harm, as they only loved each other as brother and sister, and that if I wanted her to sleep by herself all I had to do was to get her a new bed.  This speech, delivered with arch simplicity, in her Bolognese jargon, made me laugh with all my heart, for in the violence of her gesticulations she had disclosed half her charms, and I saw nothing worth looking at.  In spite of that, it was doubtless decreed that I should fall in love with her skin, for that was all she had.