“This is dreadful; you astonish me.  You appear to me in perfect health, you are prettier than ever, you are made for the worship of the sweetest of the gods, and I can’t understand how, with a temperament like yours, you can live in continual abstinence.”

“Alas! lacking the reality we console ourselves by pretending.  I will not conceal from you that I love my young boarder.  It is an innocent passion, and keeps my mind calm.  Her caresses quench the flame which would otherwise kill me.”

“And that is not against your conscience?”

“I do not feel any distress on the subject.”

“But you know it is a sin.”

“Yes, so I confess it.”

“And what does the confessor say?”

“Nothing.  He absolves me, and I am quite content:” 

“And does the pretty boarder confess, too?”

“Certainly, but she does not tell the father of a matter which she thinks is no sin.”

“I wonder the confessor has not taught her, for that kind of instruction is a great pleasure.”

“Our confessor is a wise old man.”

“Am I to leave you, then, without a single kiss?”

“Not one.”

“May I come again to-morrow?  I must go the day after.”

“You may come, but I cannot see you by myself as the nuns might talk.  I will bring my little one with me to save appearances.  Come after dinner, but into the other parlour.”

If I had not known M——­ M——­ at Aix, her religious ideas would have astonished me; but such was her character.  She loved God, and did not believe that the kind Father who made us with passions would be too severe because we had not the strength to subdue them.  I returned to the inn, feeling vexed that the pretty nun would have no more to do with me, but sure of consolation from the fair Desarmoises.

I found her sitting on her lover’s bed; his poor diet and the fever had left him in a state of great weakness.  She told me that she would sup in my room to leave him in quiet, and the worthy young man shook my hand in token of his gratitude.

As I had a good dinner at Magnan’s I ate very little supper, but my companion who had only had a light meal ate and drank to an amazing extent.  I gazed at her in a kind of wonder, and she enjoyed my astonishment.  When my servants had left the room I challenged her to drink a bowl of punch with me, and this put her into a mood which asked for nothing but laughter, and which laughed to find itself deprived of reasoning power.  Nevertheless, I cannot accuse myself of taking an advantage of her condition, for in her voluptuous excitement she entered eagerly into the pleasure to which I excited her till two o’clock in the morning.  By the time we separated we were both of us exhausted.

I slept till eleven, and when I went to wish her good day I found her smiling and as fresh as a rose.  I asked her how she had passed the rest of the night.