d of principle. Her discretion
was rather the result of system than of virtue; but if she had not a
virtuous spirit, her system would not have shielded her from the storms
of passion or the seductions of vice.

My encounter with the impudent widow had so affected me that I could not
resist going at an early hour on the following day to communicate it to
M. de Chavigni. I warned Madame Dubois that if I were not back by
dinner-time she was not to wait for me.

M. de Chavigni had been told by my enemy that she was going to pay me a
visit, but he roared with laughter on hearing the steps she had taken to
gain her ends.

"Your excellency may find it very funny," said I, "but I don't."

"So I see; but take my advice, and be the first to laugh at the
adventure. Behave as if you were unaware of her presence, and that will
be a sufficient punishment for her. People will soon say she is smitten
with you, and that you disdain her love. Go and tell the story to M.----,
and stay without ceremony to dinner. I have spoken to Lebel about your
pretty housekeeper: the worthy man had no malicious intent in sending her
to you. He happened to be going to Lausanne, and just before, I had told
him to find you a good housekeeper; thinking it over on his way, he
remembered his friend Madame Dubois, and the matter was thus arranged
without malice or pretense. She is a regular find, a perfect jewel for
you, and if you get taken with her I don't think she will allow you to
languish for long."

"I don't know, she seems to be a woman of principle."

"I shouldn't have thought you would be taken in by that sort of thing. I
will ask you both to give me a dinner to-morrow, and shall be glad to
hear her chatter."

M---- welcomed me most kindly, and congratulated me on my conquest, which
would make my country house a paradise. I joined in the jest, of course,
with the more ease that his charming wife, though I could see that she
suspected the truth, added her congratulations to those of her husband;
but I soon changed the course of their friendly mirth by telling them the
circumstances of the case. They were indignant enough then, and the
husband said that if she had really quartered herself on me in that
fashion, all I had to do was to get an injunction from the courts
forbidding her to put her foot within my doors.

"I don't want to do that," said I, "as besides publicly disgracing her I
should be skewing my own weakness, and proclaiming that I