ard task to arouse my desires if she had been
as pretty as she was ugly. Her thinness and her tawny skin could not
divert my attention from other still less pleasing features about her. I
admired her confidence in spite of her disadvantages. She must have
credited me with a diabolic appetite, but these women often contrive to
extract charms out of their depravity which their delicacy would be
impotent to furnish. She begged me to sup with her, and as she persisted
I was obliged to refuse her in a way I should not have allowed myself to
use with any other woman. She then begged me to take four tickets for the
play the next day, which was to be for her benefit. I saw it was only a
matter of twelve francs, and delighted to be quit of her so cheaply I
told her to give me sixteen. I thought she would have gone mad with joy
when I gave her a double louis. She was not the real Astrodi. I went back
to my inn and had a delicious supper in my own room.

While Le Duc was doing my hair before I went to bed, he told me that the
landlord had paid a visit to the fair stranger and her husband before
supper, and had said in clear terms that he must be paid next morning;
and if he were not, no place would be laid for them at table, and their
linen would be detained.

"Who told you that?"

"I heard it from here; their room is only separated from this by a wooden
partition. If they were in it now, I am sure they could hear all we are
saying."

"Where are they, then?"

"At table, where they are eating for to-morrow, but the lady is crying.
There's a fine chance for you, sir."

"Be quiet; I shan't have anything to do with it. It's a trap, for a woman
of any worth would die rather than weep at a public table."

"Ah, if you saw how pretty she looks in tears! I am only a poor devil,
but I would willingly give her two louis if she would earn them."

"Go and offer her the money."

A moment after the gentleman and his wife came back to their room, and I
heard the loud voice of the one and the sobs of the other, but as he was
speaking Walloon I did not understand what he said.

"Go to bed," said I to Le Duc, "and next morning tell the landlord to get
me another room, for a wooden partition is too thin a barrier to keep off
people whom despair drive to extremities."

I went to bed myself, and the sobs and muttering did not die away till
midnight.

I was shaving next morning, when Le Duc announced the Chevalier Stuard.

"Say I don't k