he sees
me, she exclaims with rapid joy,

"Ah! this is a good-looking man! Prince, it is very amiable on your part
to bring him to me. Come and sit near me, my fine fellow!"

I obeyed respectfully, but a noxious smell of musk, which seemed to me
almost corpse-like, nearly upset me. The infamous duchess had raised
herself on the sofa and exposed all the nakedness of the most disgusting
bosom, which would have caused the most courageous man to draw back. The
prince, pretending to have some engagement, left us, saying that he would
send his carriage for me in a short time.

As soon as we were alone, the plastered skeleton thrust its arms forward,
and, without giving me time to know what I was about, the creature gave
me a horrible kiss, and then one of her hands began to stray with the
most bare-faced indecency.

"Let me see, my fine cock," she said, "if you have a fine . . ."

I was shuddering, and resisted the attempt.

"Well, well! What a baby you are!" said the disgusting Messaline; "are
you such a novice?"

"No, madam; but...."

"But what?"

"I have...."

"Oh, the villain!" she exclaimed, loosing her hold; "what was I going to
expose myself to!"

I availed myself of the opportunity, snatched my hat, and took to my
heels, afraid lest the door-keeper should stop me.

I took a coach and drove to Coraline's, where I related the adventure.
She laughed heartily, and agreed with me that the prince had played me a
nasty trick. She praised the presence of mind with which I had invented
an impediment, but she did not give me an opportunity of proving to her
that I had deceived the duchess.

Yet I was not without hope, and suspected that she did not think me
sufficiently enamoured of her.

Three or four days afterwards, however, as we had supper together and
alone, I told her so many things, and I asked her so clearly to make me
happy or else to dismiss me, that she gave me an appointment for the next
day.

"To-morrow," she said, "the prince goes to Versailles, and he will not
return until the day after; we will go together to the warren to hunt
ferrets, and have no doubt we shall come back to Paris pleased with one
another."

"That is right."

The next day at ten o'clock we took a coach, but as we were nearing the
gate of the city a vis-a-vis, with servants in a foreign livery came tip
to us, and the person who was in it called out, "Stop! Stop!"

The person was the Chevalier de Wurtemburg, who, without