must belong to me:" I wished to see her
shine before our friends; and I contrived to conquer a cowardly feeling
of jealousy which, in spite of myself, was beginning to get hold of me. I
took care to make her talk on such subjects as I knew to be familiar to
her. I developed her natural intelligence, and had the satisfaction of
seeing her admired.

Applauded, flattered, animated by the satisfaction she could read in my
eyes, C---- C---- appeared a prodigy to M. de Bernis, and, oh! what a
contradiction of the human heart! I was pleased, yet I trembled lest he
should fall in love with her! What an enigma! I was intent myself upon a
work which would have caused me to murder any man who dared to undertake
it.

During the supper, which was worthy of a king, the ambassador treated
C---- C---- with the most delicate attentions. Wit, cheerfulness, decent
manners, attended our delightful party, and did not expel the gaiety and
the merry jests with which a Frenchman knows how to season every
conversation.

An observing critic who, without being acquainted with us, wished to
guess whether love was present at our happy party, might have suspected,
perhaps, but he certainly could not have affirmed, that it was there.
M---- M---- treated the ambassador as a friend. She shewed no other feeling
towards me than that of deep esteem, and she behaved to C---- C---- with
the tender affection of a sister. M. de Bernis was kind, polite, and
amiable with M---- M----, but he never ceased to take the greatest
interest in every word uttered by C---- C----, who played her part to
perfection, because she had only to follow her own nature, and, that
nature being beautiful, C---- C---- could not fail to be most charming.

We had passed five delightful hours, and the ambassador seemed more
pleased even than any of us. M---- M---- had the air of a person satisfied
with her own work, and I was playing the part of an approving spectator.
C---- C---- looked highly pleased at having secured the general
approbation, and there was, perhaps, a slight feeling of vanity in her
arising from the special attention which the ambassador had bestowed on
her. She looked at me, smiling, and I could easily understand the
language of her soul, by which she wished to tell me that she felt
perfectly well the difference between the society in which she was then,
and that in which her brother had given us such a disgusting specimen of
his depravity.

After midnight it w