well looked after.  Warn her not to confide in the laysister who will attend on her.  I have no doubt she is an excellent woman, but she is a nun, and the secret might leak out.  After she is safely delivered, she must go to confession and perform her Easter duties, and the abbess will give her a certificate of good behaviour; and she can then return to her mother, who will be too happy to see her to say anything more about the marriage, which, of course, she ought to give as her reason of her leaving home.”

After many expressions of my gratitude to her, and of my admiration of her plan, I begged her to give me the letter on the spot, as there was no time to be lost.  She was good enough to go at once to her desk, where she wrote as follows: 

“My dear abbess—­The young lady who will give you this letter is the same of whom we have spoken.  She wishes to spend three of four months under your protection, to recover her peace of mind, to perform her devotions, and to make sure that when she returns to her mother nothing more will be said about the marriage, which is partly the cause of her temporary separation from her family.”

After reading it to me, she put it into my hands unsealed that Mdlle.  X. C. V. might be able to read it.  The abbess in question was a princess, and her convent was consequently a place above all suspicion.  As Madame du Rumain gave me the letter, I felt such an impulse of gratitude that I fell on my knees before her.  This generous woman was useful to me on another occasion, of which I shall speak later on.

After leaving Madame du Rumain I went straight to the “Hotel de Bretagne,” where I saw Mdlle.  X. C. V., who had only time to tell me that she was engaged for the rest of the day, but that she would come to the garret at eleven o’clock that night, and that then we could talk matters over.  I was overjoyed at this arrangement, as I foresaw that after this would come the awakening from a happy dream, and that I should be alone with her no more.

Before leaving the hotel I gave the word to Madelaine, who in turn got the scullion to have everything in readiness.

I kept the appointment, and had not long to wait for my mistress.  After making her read the letter written by Madame du Rumain (whose name I withheld from her without her taking offence thereat) I put out the candle, and without troubling about the aroph, we set ourselves to the pleasant task of proving that we truly loved each other.

In the morning, before we separated, I gave her all the instructions I had received from Madame du Rumain; and we agreed that she should leave the house at eight o’clock with such things as she absolutely required, that she should take a coach to the Place Maubert, then send it away, and take another to the Place Antoine, and again, farther on, a third coach, in which she was to go to the convent named.  I begged her not to forget to burn all the letters she had received from me, and to write to me from the convent as often as she could, to seal her letters but to leave the address blank.  She promised to carry out my instructions, and I then made her accept a packet of two hundred louis, of which she might chance to be in need.  She wept, more for my situation than her own, but I consoled her by saying that I had plenty of money and powerful patrons.