I felt rather taken aback, but looking kindly at her, I said,

"No, no, my dear Esther; pity your friend, and say no more about it."

"Then I may read all the letters?"

"Yes, dearest, if it will amuse you."

All the letters of the faithless Manon Baletti to me, with mine to her,
were together on my table. I pointed them out to Esther, who begun to
read them quite eagerly.

When I was dressed, as if for some Court holiday, Le Duc went out and
left us by ourselves, for the worthy governess, who was working at her
lace by the window, looked at her lace, and nothing else. Esther said
that nothing had ever amused her so much as those letters.

"Those cursed epistles, which please you so well, will be the death of
me."

"Death? Oh, no! I will cure you, I hope."

"I hope so, too; but after dinner you must help me to burn them all from
first to last."

"Burn them! No; make me a present of them. I promise to keep them
carefully all my days."

"They are yours, Esther. I will send them to you to-morrow."

These letters were more than two hundred in number, and the shortest were
four pages in length. She was enchanted to find herself the possessor of
the letters, and she said she would make them into a parcel and take them
away herself.

"Shall you send back the portrait to your faithless mistress?" said she.

"I don't know what to do with it."

"Send it back to her; she is not worthy of your honouring her by keeping
it. I am sure that your oracle would give you the same advice. Where is
the portrait? Will you shew it me?"

I had the portrait in the interior of a gold snuff-box, but I had never
shewn it to Esther for fear she should think Manon handsomer than
herself, and conclude that I only shewd it her out of vanity; but as she
now asked to see it I opened the box where it was and gave it her.

Any other woman besides Esther would have pronounced Manon downright
ugly, or have endeavored at the least to find some fault with her, but
Esther pronounced her to be very beautiful, and only said it was a great
pity so fair a body contained so vile a soul.

The sight of Manon's portrait made Esther ask to see all the other
portraits which Madame Manzoni had sent me from Venice. There were naked
figures amongst them, but Esther was too pure a spirit to put on the
hateful affectations of the prude, to whom everything natural is an
abomination. O-Murphy pleased her very much, and her history, which I
related, struck