I had very little money about me.

What should I have said if I had been told in the morning that instead of
drowning myself I should take part in so pleasant an entertainment?

The debt I had contracted with the young Englishman made me resolve to
put off my suicide to another day. After the nymphs had gone I tried to
get rid of Edgar, but in vain; he told me I was getting better, that the
oysters I had taken skewed my stomach was improving, and that if I came
with him to Ranelagh I should be able to make a good dinner the next day.
I was weak and indifferent and let myself be persuaded, and got into a
coach with Edgar in obedience to the Stoic maxim I had learnt in the
happy days of my youth: 'Sequere Deum'.

We entered the fine rotunda with our hats off, and began to walk round
and round, our arms behind our backs--a common custom in England, at
least in those days.

A minuet was being danced, and I was so attracted by a lady who danced
extremely well that I waited for her to turn round. What made me notice
her more particularly was that her dress and hat were exactly like those
I had given to the Charpillon a few days before, but as I believed the
poor wretch to be dead or dying the likeness did not inspire me with any
suspicion. But the lady turned round, lifted her face, and I saw--the
Charpillon herself!

Edgar told me afterwards that at that moment he thought to see me fall to
the ground in an epileptic fit; I trembled and shuddered so terribly.

However, I felt so sure she was ill that I could not believe my own eyes,
and the doubt brought me to my senses.

"She can't be the Charpillon," I said to myself, "she is some other girl
like her, and my enfeebled senses have led me astray." In the meanwhile
the lady, intent on her dancing, did not glance in my direction, but I
could afford to wait. At last she lifted her arms to make the curtsy at
the end of the minuet, I went up instinctively as if I were about to
dance with her; she looked me in the face, and fled.

I constrained myself; but now that there could be no doubt my shuddering
fit returned, and I made haste to sit down. A cold sweat bedewed my face
and my whole body. Edgar advised me to take a cup of tea but I begged him
to leave me alone for a few moments.

I was afraid that I was on the point of death; I trembled all over, and
my heart beat so rapidly that I could not have stood up had I wished.

At last, instead of dying, I got new life. What