man! But
that would be the plan of a mad woman or of a person reduced to utter
despair, and it does not seem to be the case with Henriette. Yet she
possesses nothing. True, but she refused, as if she had been provided
with all she needed, the kind assistance of a man who has the right to
offer it, and from whom, in sooth, she can accept without blushing, since
she has not been ashamed to grant him favours with which love had nothing
to do. Does she think that it is less shameful for a woman to abandon
herself to the desires of a man unknown and unloved than to receive a
present from an esteemed friend, and particularly at the eve of finding
herself in the street, entirely destitute in the middle of a foreign
city, amongst people whose language she cannot even speak? Perhaps she
thinks that such conduct will justify the 'faux pas' of which she has
been guilty with the captain, and give him to understand that she had
abandoned herself to him only for the sake of escaping from the officer
with whom she was in Rome. But she ought to be quite certain that the
captain does not entertain any other idea; he shews himself so reasonable
that it is impossible to suppose that he ever admitted the possibility of
having inspired her with a violent passion, because she had seen him once
through a window in Civita-Vecchia. She might possibly be right, and feel
herself justified in her conduct towards the captain, but it is not the
same with me, for with her intelligence she must be aware that I would
not have travelled with them if she had been indifferent to me, and she
must know that there is but one way in which she can obtain my pardon.
She may be endowed with many virtues, but she has not the only one which
could prevent me from wishing the reward which every man expects to
receive at the hands of the woman he loves. If she wants to assume
prudish manners towards me and to make a dupe of me, I am bound in honour
to shew her how much she is mistaken."

After this monologue, which had made me still more angry, I made up my
mind to have an explanation in the morning before our departure.

"I shall ask her," said I to myself, "to grant me the same favours which
she has so easily granted to her old captain, and if I meet with a
refusal the best revenge will be to shew her a cold and profound contempt
until our arrival in Parma."

I felt sure that she could not refuse me some marks of real or of
pretended affection, unless she wished