t I thought of going on the next
day.

Her husband hastened to say that that was quite out of the question.

"Oh, I hope you won't go," she added, "you must do my husband the honour
of dining with us."

After the husband had pressed me for some time I gave in, and accepted
their invitation to dinner for the day after next.

Instead of stopping two days I stopped four. I was much pleased with the
husband's mother, who was advanced in years but extremely intelligent.
She had evidently made a point of forgetting everything unpleasant in the
past history of her son's wife.

Madame Blasin told me in private that she was perfectly happy, and I had
every reason to believe that she was speaking the truth. She had made a
rule to be most precise in fulfilling her wifely duties, and rarely went
out unless accompanied by her husband or her mother-in-law.

I spent these four days in the enjoyment of pure and innocent friendship
without there being the slightest desire on either side to renew our
guilty pleasures.

On the third day after I had dined with her and her husband, she told me,
while we were alone for a moment, that if I wanted fifty louis she knew
where to get them for me. I told her to keep them for another time, if I
was so happy as to see her again, and so unhappy as to be in want.

I left Montpellier feeling certain that my visit had increased the esteem
in which her husband and her mother-in-law held her, and I congratulated
myself on my ability to be happy without committing any sins.

The day after I had bade them farewell, I slept at Nimes, where I spent
three days in the company of a naturalist: M. de Seguier, the friend of
the Marquis Maffei of Verona. In his cabinet of natural history I saw and
admired the immensity and infinity of the Creator's handiwork.

Nimes is a town well worthy of the stranger's observation; it provides
food for the mind, and the fair sex, which is really fair there, should
give the heart the food it likes best.

I was asked to a ball, where, as a foreigner, I took first place--a
privilege peculiar to France, for in England, and still more in Spain, a
foreigner means an enemy.

On leaving Nimes I resolved to spend the carnival at Aix, where the
nobility is of the most distinguished character. I believe I lodged at
the "Three Dolphins," where I found a Spanish cardinal on his way to Rome
to elect a successor to Pope Rezzonico.

CHAPTER IX

My Stay at Aix; I Fall Ill-