and discover whether I am speaking true." Upon this she
drew the billet from her bosom, and handed it to me.

I opened it with amazement, and saw at once that I had never written it.
I read it through, and found in it the divagations of a most consummate
lady-killer, full of panegyrics on the fair one's charms, oceans of
nauseous adulation, stuffed out with verses filched from Metastasio. I
was on the point of giving way to laughter. The concluding moral of the
letter was that I (who was not I), being desperately in love with her,
and forecasting the impossibility of keeping company with her, saw my
only hope in the possession of her portrait; if I could obtain but this,
and keep it close to a heart wounded by Cupid's dart, this would have
been an immense relief to my intense passion.

"Is it conceivable, madam," said I, after reading this precious
effusion, "that you have conceived a gracious inclination toward me,
grounded on my discretion, on my prudence, on my good principles, on my
ways of thinking, and that after all this you have accepted such
ridiculous and stupid stuff as a composition addressed by me to you?"
"So it is," she answered: "we women cannot wholly divest us of a certain
vanity, which makes us foolish and blind. Added to the letter, the man
who brought it uttered words, as though they came from you, which
betrayed me into an imprudence that will cost me many tears, I fear. I
answered the letter with some civil sentiments, cordially expressed; and
as I happened to have by me a miniature, set in jewels, and ordered by
my husband, I consigned this to the man in question, together with my
note, feeling sure that if I were obliged to show the picture to my
husband, you would have returned it to me. It seems then that you have
received neither the portrait nor my letter in reply?" "Is it possible,"
I answered, "that you are still in doubt about my having done this
thing? Do you still believe me capable of such an action?" "No, no!" she
said: "I see only too well that you have nothing to do with the affair.
Poor wretched me! to what am I exposed then? A letter written by my hand
... that portrait ... in the keeping of that man ... my husband!... For
heaven's sake, give me some good counsel!" She abandoned herself to
tears.

I could do nothing but express my astonishment at the cleverness of the
thief. I tried to tranquillise her; then I said that, if I had to give
advice, it was necessary that I should be