I am about to relate to you an adventure, the bare
mention of which covers my cheek with guilty blushes; fain would I
conceal it from you, but my promise is given to lay my whole heart
before you, and it shall be done, cost what it may.

I know not why it should ever have been permitted you gentlemen to
frame laws, which, while they permit you, in the gratification of your
passions, to descend ever so low in the scale of society without any
disgrace attaching itself to you from the obscure condition of the
object of your search, to us females it is prohibited, under penalty
of incurring the utmost degradation, to gratify the inclination of our
hearts when awakened by one of more humble rank than our own. A great
lord may love a kitchen maid, a noble duke, like M. de Villeroi, may
indulge his fancy for a waiting-woman, and yet lose no portion of his
dignity, or of the esteem in which the world holds him; but, on the
other hand, woe to the high-born dame who should receive the homage of
an obscure citizen, or the noble countess who should lend a favourable
ear to the sighs of her _valet de chambre_; the public voice would loud
and angrily inveigh against so flagrant a breach of decorum. And why
should this be? But, my friend, do you not see in my seeking to defend
so weak a cause sufficient intimation that such a justification involves
a consciousness of requiring it? Alas! I plead guilty, and will no
longer delay the painful confession I have to make.

Do you remember a singularly handsome young man, who, during my abode
with madame Lagarde, fascinated me till my very senses seemed bewildered
by my passion. You know how he betrayed me, and how, through him, I
was expelled the house, as well as the termination of this foolish
adventure. You are now to pass over seven or eight years, and take
your place with me in the drawing-room, in which I stood when I rang
to summon a servant to convey a letter to the duc de Villeroi. You may
remember what I told you in the last chapter of the person who entered,
of his agitation and his blushes, and of his fixing his eyes with deep
meaning upon me till he quitted the room-this servant was Noel!

Had I listened to the dictates of prudence, I should, without loss of
time, have obtained against him a _lettre de cachet_, which would have
freed me from all chance of discovery through his means; but I could not
listen to such cool-blooded, though cautious, suggestions. One idea only
took