“How is fortune treating you?”

“Canano wins two hundred sequins from me every day.”

“But you won two thousand from him in one night.”

“You will break his bank on Sunday.  We will bring you luck.”

“Would you like to look on?”

“We should be delighted, but my brother says you don’t want to go with us.”

“Quite so, the reason is that I should be recognized.  But I believe the gentleman who will accompany you is of the same figure as myself.”

“Exactly the same,” said the cousin; “except that he is fair.”

“All the better,” said I, “the fair always conquer the dark with ease.”

“Not always,” said the other.  “But tell us, at any rate, whether we are to wear men’s dresses.”

“Fie! fie!  I should be angry with myself if I had entertained such a thought.”

“That’s curious; why so?”

“I’ll tell you.  If the disguise is complete I am disgusted, for the shape of a woman is much more marked than that of a man, and consequently a woman in man’s dress, who looks like a man, cannot have a good figure.”

“But when a woman skews her shape well?”

“Then I am angry with her for skewing too much, for I like to see the face and the general outlines of the form and to guess the rest.”

“But the imagination is often deceptive!”

“Yes, but it is with the face that I always fall in love, and that never deceives me as far as it is concerned.  Then if I have the good fortune to see anything more I am always in a lenient mood and disposed to pass over small faults.  You are laughing?”

“I am smiling at your impassioned arguments.”

“Would you like to be dressed like a man?”

“I was expecting something of the kind, but after you have said we can make no more objections.”

“I can imagine what you would say; I should certainly not take you for men, but I will say no more.”

They looked at each other, and blushed and smiled as they saw my gaze fixed on two pre-eminences which one would never expect to see in any man.  We began to talk of other things, and for two hours I enjoyed their lively and cultured conversation.

When I left them I went off to my apartments, then to the opera, where I lost two hundred sequins, and finally supped with the countess, who had become quite amiable.  However, she soon fell back into her old ways when she found that my politeness was merely external, and that I had no intentions whatever of troubling her in her bedroom again.

On the Saturday morning the young officer came to see me, and I told him that there was only one thing that I wanted him to do, but that it must be done exactly according to my instructions.  He promised to follow them to the letter, and I proceeded,—­

“You must get a carriage and four, and as soon as the five of you are in it tell the coachman to drive as fast as his horses can gallop out of Milan, and to bring you back again by another road to the house.  There you must get down, send the carriage away, after enjoining silence on the coachman, and come in.  After the ball you will undress in the same house, and then go home in sedan-chairs.  Thus we shall be able to baffle the inquisitive, who will be pretty numerous, I warn you.”