“Very pleasantly,” said she, “like the beginning of the night.”

“What time would you like to have dinner?”

“I won’t dine; I prefer to keep my appetite for supper.”

Here her lover joined in, saying in a weak voice,—­

“It is impossible to keep up with her.”

“In eating or drinking?” I asked.

“In eating, drinking, and in other things,” he replied, with a smile.  She laughed, and kissed him affectionately.

This short dialogue convinced me that Mdlle.  Desarmoises must adore her lover; for besides his being a handsome young man, his disposition was exactly suitable to hers.  I dined by myself, and Le Duc came in as I was having dessert.  He told me that the door-keeper’s daughters and their pretty cousin had made him wait for them to write to me, and he gave me three letters and three dozen of gloves which they had presented me.  The letters urged me to come and spend a month with them, and gave me to understand that I should be well pleased with my treatment.  I had not the courage to return to a town, where with my reputation I should have been obliged to draw horoscopes for all the young ladies or to make enemies by refusing.

After I had read the letters from Grenoble I went to the convent and announced my presence, and then entered the parlour which M——­ M——­ had indicated.  She soon came down with the pretty boarder, who feebly sustained my part in her amorous ecstacies.  She had not yet completed her twelfth year, but she was extremely tall and well developed for her age.  Gentleness, liveliness, candour, and wit were united in her features, and gave her expression an exquisite charm.  She wore a well-made corset which disclosed a white throat, to which the fancy easily added the two spheres which would soon appear there.  Her entrancing face, her raven locks, and her ivory throat indicated what might be concealed, and my vagrant imagination made her into a budding Venus.  I began by telling her that she was very pretty, and would make her future husband a happy man.  I knew she would blush at that.  It may be cruel, but it is thus that the language of seduction always begins.  A girl of her age who does not blush at the mention of marriage is either an idiot or already an expert in profligacy.  In spite of this, however, the blush which mounts to a young girl’s cheek at the approach of such ideas is a puzzling problem.  Whence does it arise?  It may be from pure simplicity, it may be from shame, and often from a mixture of both feelings.  Then comes the fight between vice and virtue, and it is usually virtue which has to give in.  The desires—­the servants of vice—­usually attain their ends.  As I knew the young boarder from M——­ M——­’s description, I could not be ignorant of the source of those blushes which added a fresh attraction to her youthful charms.

Pretending not to notice anything, I talked to M——­ M——­ for a few moments, and then returned to the assault.  She had regained her calm.