ouse.

Her mother, feeling sure that I would pay the bill, had ordered an
excellent supper for four, and several flasks of the best Florence wine.
Besides that, she gave me a bottle of the wine called Oleatico, which I
found excellent. The three Corticellis unaccustomed to good fare and
wine, ate like a troop, and began to get intoxicated. The mother and son
went to bed without ceremony, and the little wanton invited me to follow
their example. I should have liked to do so, but I did not dare. It was
very cold and there was no fire in the room, there was only one blanket
on the bed, and I might have caught a bad cold, and I was too fond of my
good health to expose myself to such a danger. I therefore satisfied
myself by taking her on my knee, and after a few preliminaries she
abandoned herself to my transports, endeavouring to persuade me that I
had got her maidenhead. I pretended to believe her, though I cared very
little whether it were so or not.

I left her after I had repeated the dose three or four times, and gave
her fifty sequins, telling her to get a good wadded coverlet and a large
brazier, as I wanted to sleep with her the next night.

Next morning I received an extremely interesting letter from Grenoble. M.
de Valenglard informed me that the fair Mdlle. Roman, feeling convinced
that her horoscope would never come true unless she went to Paris, had
gone to the capital with her aunt.

Her destiny was a strange one; it depended on the liking I had taken to
her and my aversion to marriage, for it lay in my power to have married
the handsomest woman in France, and in that case it is not likely that
she would have become the mistress of Louis XV. What strange whim could
have made me indicate in her horoscope the necessity of her journeying to
Paris; for even if there were such a science as astrology I was no
astrologer; in fine, her destiny depended on my absurd fancy. And in
history, what a number of extraordinary events would never have happened
if they had not been predicted!

In the evening I went to the theatre, and found my Corticelli clad in a
pretty cloak, while the other girls looked at me contemptuously, for they
were enraged at the place being taken; while the proud favourite caressed
me with an air of triumph which became her to admiration.

In the evening I found a good supper awaiting me, a large brazier on the
hearth, and a warm coverlet on the bed. The mother shewed me all the
things her daug