sposed to receive you; go and
talk to her. I shall not be in till noon."

I put twenty-five Louis in a pretty little purse, and left my room
thinking that the victory was won. I entered her room and approached her
bed respectfully. When she heard me she sat up in bed without taking the
trouble to cover her breast, and before I could wish her good-day she
spoke to me as follows:

"I am ready, sir, to pay with my body for the wretched twenty-five Louis
of which my husband is in need. You can do what you like with me; but
remember that in taking advantage of my position to assuage your brutal
lust you are the viler of the two, for I only sell myself so cheaply
because necessity compels me to do so. Your baseness is more shameful
than mine. Come on; here I am."

With this flattering address she threw off the coverlet with a vigorous
gesture, and displayed all her beauties, which I might have gazed on with
such different feelings from those which now filled my breast. For a
moment I was silent with indignation. All my passion had evaporated; in
those voluptuous rounded limbs I saw now only the covering of a wild
beast's soul. I put back the coverlet with the greatest calmness, and
addressed her in a tone of cold contempt:

"No, madam, I shall not leave this room degraded because you have told me
so, but I shall leave it after imparting to you a few degrading truths,
of which you cannot be ignorant if you are a woman of any decency
whatever. Here are twenty-five louis, a wretched sum to give a virtuous
woman in payment of her favours, but much more than you deserve. I am not
brutal, and to convince you of the fact I am going to leave you in the
undisturbed possession of your charms, which I despise as heartily as I
should have admired them if your behaviour had been different. I only
give you the money from a feeling of compassion which I cannot overcome,
and which is the only feeling I now have for you. Nevertheless, let me
tell you that whether a woman sells herself for twenty-five louis or
twenty-five million louis she is as much a prostitute in the one case as
in the other, if she does not give her love with herself, or at all
events the semblance of love. Farewell."

I went back to my room, and in course of time Stuard came to thank me.

"Sir," said I, "let me alone; I wish to hear no more about your wife."

They went away the next day for Lyons, and my readers will hear of them
again at Liege.

In the afternoon