“Yes, madam, and I have had the honour to return it to his eminence.  I have found it so perfect that I am certain it must have cost you a great deal of time.”

“Time?” exclaimed the cardinal; “Oh! you do not know the marchioness.”

“Monsignor,” I replied, “nothing can be done well without time, and that is why I have not dared to chew to your eminence an answer to the sonnet which I have written in half an hour.”

“Let us see it, abbe,” said the marchioness; “I want to read it.”

“Answer of Silesia to Love.”  This title brought the most fascinating blushes on her countenance.  “But Love is not mentioned in the sonnet,” exclaimed the cardinal.  “Wait,” said the marchioness, “we must respect the idea of the poet:” 

She read the sonnet over and over, and thought that the reproaches addressed by Silesia to Love were very just.  She explained my idea to the cardinal, making him understand why Silesia was offended at having been conquered by the King of Prussia.

“Ah, I see, I see!” exclaimed the cardinal, full of joy; “Silesia is a woman.... and the King of Prussia....  Oh! oh! that is really a fine idea!” And the good cardinal laughed heartily for more than a quarter of an hour.  “I must copy that sonnet,” he added, “indeed I must have it.”

“The abbe,” said the obliging marchioness, “will save you the trouble:  I will dictate it to him.”

I prepared to write, but his eminence suddenly exclaimed, “My dear marchioness, this is wonderful; he has kept the same rhymes as in your own sonnet:  did you observe it?”

The beautiful marchioness gave me then a look of such expression that she completed her conquest.  I understood that she wanted me to know the cardinal as well as she knew him; it was a kind of partnership in which I was quite ready to play my part.

As soon as I had written the sonnet under the charming woman’s dictation, I took my leave, but not before the cardinal had told me that he expected me to dinner the next day.

I had plenty of work before me, for the ten stanzas I had to compose were of the most singular character, and I lost no time in shutting myself up in my room to think of them.  I had to keep my balance between two points of equal difficulty, and I felt that great care was indispensable.  I had to place the marchioness in such a position that she could pretend to believe the cardinal the author of the stanzas, and, at the same time, compel her to find out that I had written them, and that I was aware of her knowing it.  It was necessary to speak so carefully that not one expression should breathe even the faintest hope on my part, and yet to make my stanzas blaze with the ardent fire of my love under the thin veil of poetry.  As for the cardinal, I knew well enough that the better the stanzas were written, the more disposed he would be to sign them.  All I wanted was clearness, so difficult to obtain in poetry, while a little doubtful darkness would have been accounted sublime by my new Midas.  But, although I wanted to please him, the cardinal was only a secondary consideration, and the handsome marchioness the principal object.