“But as you do not indulge in any expense it would be better for you not to play; it is time wasted.”

“Time given to pleasure is never time lost, madam; the only time which a young man wastes is that which is consumed in weariness, because when he is a prey to ennui he is likely to fall a prey to love, and to be despised by the object of his affection.”

“Very likely; but you amuse yourself with hoarding up your money, and shew yourself to be a miser, and a miser is not less contemptible than a man in love.  Why do you not buy yourself a pair of gloves?”

You may be sure that at these words the laughter was all on her side, and my vexation was all the greater because I could not deny that she was quite right.  It was the adjutant’s business to give the ladies an arm to their carriages, and it was not proper to fulfil that duty without gloves.  I felt mortified, and the reproach of avarice hurt me deeply.  I would a thousand times rather that she had laid my error to a want of education; and yet, so full of contradictions is the human heart, instead of making amends by adopting an appearance of elegance which the state of my finances enabled me to keep up, I did not purchase any gloves, and I resolved to avoid her and to abandon her to the insipid and dull gallantry of Sanzonio, who sported gloves, but whose teeth were rotten, whose breath was putrid, who wore a wig, and whose face seemed to be covered with shrivelled yellow parchment.

I spent my days in a continual state of rage and spite, and the most absurd part of it all was that I felt unhappy because I could not control my hatred for that woman whom, in good conscience, I could not find guilty of anything.  She had for me neither love nor dislike, which was quite natural; but being young and disposed to enjoy myself I had become, without any wilful malice on her part, an eye-sore to her and the butt of her bantering jokes, which my sensitiveness exaggerated greatly.  For all that I had an ardent wish to punish her and to make her repent.  I thought of nothing else.  At one time I would think of devoting all my intelligence and all my money to kindling an amorous passion in her heart, and then to revenge myself by treating her with contempt.  But I soon realized the impracticability of such a plan, for even supposing that I should succeed in finding my way to her heart, was I the man to resist my own success with such a woman?  I certainly could not flatter myself that I was so strong-minded.  But I was the pet child of fortune, and my position was suddenly altered.

M. D——­ R——­ having sent me with dispatches to M. de Condulmer, captain of a ‘galeazza’, I had to wait until midnight to deliver them, and when I returned I found that M. D——­ R——­ had retired to his apartment for the night.  As soon as he was visible in the morning I went to him to render an account of my mission.  I had been with him only a few minutes when his valet brought a letter