“I was joking,” said the countess, “you may love Irene with a good conscience.”

“We will see what can be done.”

When Irene had left the room, I said to the mother,—­

“I like your daughter, but I won’t be long sighing for her, and you mustn’t take me for a dupe.”

“Speak to my husband about it.  We are very poor, and we want to go to Cremona.”

“I suppose Irene has a lover?”

“No.”

“But she has had one, of course?”

“Never anything serious.”

“I can’t believe it.”

“It’s true, nevertheless.  Irene is intact.”

Just then Irene came in with her father, who had aged to such an extent that I should never have known him in the street.  He came up to me and embraced me, begging me to forget the past.  “It is only you,” he added, “who can furnish me with funds to go to Cremona.

“I have several debts here, and am in some danger of imprisonment.  Nobody of any consequence comes to see me.  My dear daughter is the only thing of value which I still possess.  I have just been trying to sell this pinchbeck watch, and though I asked only six sequins, which is half what it is worth, they would not give me more than two.  When a man gets unfortunate, everything is against him.”

I took the watch, and gave the father six sequins for it, and then handed it to Irene.  She said with a smile that she could not thank me, as I only gave her back her own, but she thanked me for the present I had made her father.

“Here,” said she seriously to the old man, “you can sell it again now.”

This made me laugh.  I gave the count ten sequins in addition, embraced Irene, and said I must be gone, but that I would see them again in three or four days.

Irene escorted me to the bottom of the stairs, and as she allowed me to assure myself that she still possessed the rose of virginity, I gave her another ten sequins, and told her that the first time she went alone to the ball with me I would give her a hundred sequins.  She said she would consult her father.

Feeling sure that the poor devil would hand over Irene to me, and having no apartment in which I could enjoy her in freedom, I stopped to read a bill in a pastrycook’s window.  It announced a room to let.  I went in, and the pastrycook told me that the house belonged to him, and his pretty wife, who was suckling a baby, begged me to come upstairs and see the room.  The street was a lonely one, and had a pleasing air of mystery about it.  I climbed to the third floor, but the rooms there were wretched garrets of no use to me.

“The first floor,” said the woman, “consists of a suite of four nice rooms, but we only let them together.”

“Let us go and see them.  Good! they will do.  What is the rent?”

“You must settle that with my husband.”

“And can’t I settle anything with you, my dear?”