han anybody else. You quite understand how
discreet your behaviour must be. Above all, do not get into any trouble;
for I suppose you know that, if anything happened to you, it would be of
no use to talk of your mission. We should be obliged to know nothing
about you, for ambassadors are the only avowed spies. Remember that you
must be even more careful and reserved than they, and yet, if you wish to
succeed, all this must be concealed, and you must have an air of freedom
from constraint that you may inspire confidence. If, on your return, you
like to shew me your report before handing it in, I will tell you what
may require to be left out or added."

Full of this affair, the importance of which I exaggerated in proportion
to my inexperience, I told Silvia that I wanted to accompany some English
friends as far as Calais, and that she would oblige me by getting me a
passport from the Duc de Gesvres. Always ready to oblige me, she sat down
directly and wrote the duke a letter, telling me to deliver it myself
since my personal description was necessary. These passports carry legal
weight in the Isle de France only, but they procure one respect in all
the northern parts of the kingdom.

Fortified with Silvia's letter, and accompanied by her husband, I went to
the duke who was at his estate at St. Toro, and he had scarcely read the
letter through before he gave me the passport. Satisfied on this point I
went to Villette, and asked Madame if she had anything I could take to
her niece. "You can take her the box of china statuettes," said she, "if
M. Corneman has not sent them already." I called on the banker who gave
me the box, and in return for a hundred Louis a letter of credit on a
Dunkirk house. I begged him to name me in the letter in a special manner,
as I was going for the sake of pleasure. He seemed glad to oblige me, and
I started the same evening, and three days later I was at the "Hotel de
la Conciergerie," in Dunkirk.

An hour after my arrival I gave the charming Madame P---- an agreeable
surprise by handing her the box, and giving her her aunt's messages. Just
as she was praising her husband, and telling me how happy she was, he
came in, saying he was delighted to see me and asked me to stay in his
house, without enquiring whether my stay in Dunkirk would be a long or
short one. I of course thanked him, and after promising to dine now and
again at his house I begged him to take me to the banker on whom I had a