her that she pained him by telling him of the only wrong he had ever
committed in his life--the breaking of the troth pledged to his first
sweetheart, all love for whom he had since effaced from his heart.
This candid speech made her seize him and clasp him to her heart,
affected at the loyalty of his discourse on a subject from which many
would have shrunk.

"My dear love," said she, "for a long time past I have been suffering
from a retraction of the heart, which has always since my youth been
dangerous to my life, and in this opinion the Arabian physician
coincides. If I die, I wish you to make the most binding oath a knight
can make, to wed Mademoiselle Montmorency. I am so certain of dying,
that I leave my property to you only on condition that this marriage
takes place."

Hearing this, l'Ile Adam turned pale, and felt faint at the mere
thought of an eternal separation from his good wife.

"Yes, dear treasure of love," continued she. "I am punished by God
there where my sins were committed, for the great joys that I feel
dilate my heart, and have, according to the Arabian doctor, weakened
the vessels which in a moment of excitement will burst; but I have
always implored God to take my life at the age in which I now am,
because I would not see my charms marred by the ravages of time."

This great and noble woman saw then how well she was beloved. This is
how she obtained the greatest sacrifice of love that ever was made
upon this earth. She alone knew what a charm existed in the embraces,
fondlings, and raptures of the conjugal bed, which were such that poor
l'Ile Adam would rather have died than allow himself to be deprived of
the amorous delicacies she knew so well how to prepare. At this
confession made by her that, in the excitement of love her heart would
burst, the chevalier cast himself at her knees, and declared that to
preserve her life he would never ask her for love, but would live
contented to see her only at his side, happy at being able to touch
but the hem of her garment.

She replied, bursting into tears, "that she would rather die than lose
one iota of his love; that she would die as she had lived, since
luckily she could make a man embrace her when such was her desire
without having to put her request into words."

Here it must be stated that the cardinal of Ragusa had given her as a
present an article, which this holy joker called _in articulo mortis_.
It was a tiny glass bottle, no bigger