wife than a distant and half-worn-out memory.

Thus she had, with the supreme facility of youth, always ready to be
happy, taken up her gladness again, without even asking what genius had
brought back to her the treasure which she had thought lost, when she
received an invitation from a lady of the neighbourhood to spend some
days in her country house. Her husband and her two brothers-in-law,
invited with her, were of the party, and accompanied her. A great
hunting party had been arranged beforehand, and almost immediately upon
arriving everyone began to prepare for taking part in it.

The abbe, whose talents had made him indispensable in every company,
declared that for that day he was the marquise's cavalier, a title which
his sister-in-law, with her usual amiability, confirmed. Each of the
huntsmen, following this example, made choice of a lady to whom to
dedicate his attentions throughout the day; then, this chivalrous
arrangement being completed, all present directed their course towards
the place of meeting.

That happened which almost always happens the dogs hunted on their own
account. Two or three sportsmen only followed the dogs; the rest got
lost. The abbe, in his character of esquire to the marquise, had not
left her for a moment, and had managed so cleverly that he was
alone with her--an opportunity which he had been seeking for a month
previously with no less care--than the marquise had been using to avoid
it. No sooner, therefore, did the marquise believe herself aware that
the abbe had intentionally turned aside from the hunt than she attempted
to gallop her horse in the opposite direction from that which she had
been following; but the abbe stopped her. The marquise neither could nor
would enter upon a struggle; she resigned herself, therefore, to hearing
what the abbe had to say to her, and her face assumed that air of
haughty disdain which women so well know how to put on when they wish
a man to understand that he has nothing to hope from them. There was an
instant's silence; the abbe was the first to break it.

"Madame," said he, "I ask your pardon for having used this means to
speak to you alone; but since, in spite of my rank of brother-in-law,
you did not seem inclined to grant me that favour if I had asked it, I
thought it would be better for me, to deprive you of the power to refuse
it me."

"If you have hesitated to ask me so simple a thing, monsieur," replied
the marquise, "and if you ha