“But I hope that your lover....”

“Will not be there?  Certainly not.  Have you a mistress?”

“I had one, but, alas! she has been taken from me by violent means, and for the last six months I have led a life of complete celibacy.”

“Do you love her still?”

“I cannot think of her without loving her.  She has almost as great charms, as great beauty, as you have; but I foresee that you will make me forget her.”

“If your happiness with her was complete, I pity you.  She has been violently taken from you, and you shun society in order to feed your sorrow.  I have guessed right, have I not?  But if I happen to take possession of her place in your heart, no one, my sweet friend, shall turn me out of it.”

“But what will your lover say?”

“He will be delighted to see me happy with such a lover as you.  It is in his nature.”

“What an admirable nature!  Such heroism is quite beyond me!”

“What sort of a life do you lead in Venice?”

“I live at the theatres, in society, in the casinos, where I fight against fortune sometimes with good sometimes with bad success.”

“Do you visit the foreign ambassadors?”

“No, because I am too much acquainted with the nobility; but I know them all.”

“How can you know them if you do not see them?”

“I have known them abroad.  In Parma the Duke de Montalegre, the Spanish ambassador; in Vienna I knew Count Rosemberg; in Paris, about two years ago, the French ambassador.”

“It is near twelve o’clock, my dear friend; it is time for us to part.  Come at the same hour the day after tomorrow, and I will give you all the instructions which you will require to enable you to come and sup with me.”

“Alone?”

“Of course.”

“May I venture to ask you for a pledge?  The happiness which you promise me is so immense!”

“What pledge do you want?”

“To see you standing before that small window in the grating with permission for me to occupy the same place as Madame de S——.”

She rose at once, and, with the most gracious smile, touched the spring; after a most expressive kiss, I took leave of her.  She followed me with her eyes as far as the door, and her loving gaze would have rooted me to the spot if she had not left the room.

I spent the two days of expectation in a whirl of impatient joy, which prevented me from eating and sleeping; for it seemed to me that no other love had ever given me such happiness, or rather that I was going to be happy for the first time.

Irrespective of birth, beauty, and wit, which was the principal merit of my new conquest, prejudice was there to enhance a hundredfold my felicity, for she was a vestal:  it was forbidden fruit, and who does not know that, from Eve down to our days, it was that fruit which has always appeared the most delicious!  I was on the point of encroaching upon the rights of an all-powerful husband; in my eyes M——­ M——­ was above all the queens of the earth.