ther the next day.

At eight o'clock the two carriages were ready, and Malingan, his wife,
his daughter, and the two gentlemen got into the first vehicle, and I had
to get into the second with the ladies from Liege and the Charpillon, who
seemed to have become very intimate with them. This made me ill-tempered,
and I sulked the whole way. We were an hour and a quarter on the journey,
and when we arrived I ordered a good dinner, and then we proceeded to
view the gardens; the day was a beautiful one, though it was autumn.

Whilst we were Walking the Charpillon came up to me and said she wanted
to return the bills in the same place in which I had given her them. As
we were at some distance from the others I pelted her with abuse, telling
her of her perfidy and of her corruption at an age when she should have
retained some vestiges of innocence calling her by the name she deserved,
as I reminded her how often she had already prostituted herself; in short
I threatened her with my vengeance if she pushed me to extremities. But
she was as cold as ice, and opposed a calm front to the storm of
invective I rained in her ears. However, as the other guests were at no
great distance, she begged me to speak more softly, but they heard me and
I was very glad of it.

At last we sat down to dinner, and the wretched woman contrived to get a
place beside me, and behaved all the while as if I were her lover, or at
any rate as if she loved me. She did not seem to care what people thought
of my coldness, while I was in a rage, for the company must either have
thought me a fool or else that she was making game of me.

After dinner we returned to the garden, and the Charpillon, determined to
gain the victory, clung to my arm and after several turns led me towards
the maze where she wished to try her power. She made me sit down on the
grass beside her and attacked me with passionate words and tender
caresses, and by displaying the most interesting of her charms she
succeeded in seducing me, but still I do not know whether I were impelled
by love or vengeance, and I am inclined to think that my feelings were a
compound of both passions.

But at the moment she looked the picture of voluptuous abandon. Her
ardent eyes, her fiery cheeks, her wanton kisses, her swelling breast,
and her quick sighs, all made me think that she stood as much in need of
defeat as I of victory; certainly I should not have judged that she was
already calculating on re