and I feared lest I should
be unable to perform the great act. I was thirty-eight, and I began to
feel age stealing on me. The Undine, whom I was to obtain of the moon,
was none other than Marcoline, who was to give me the necessary
generative vigour by the sight of her beauty and by the contact of her
hands. The reader will see how I made her come down from heaven.

I received a note from Madame Audibert which made me call on her before
paying my visit to Marcoline. As soon as I came in she told me joyously
that my niece's father had just received a letter from the father of the
Genoese, asking the hand of his daughter for his only son, who had been
introduced to her by the Chevalier de Seingalt, her uncle, at the
Paretti's.

"The worthy man thinks himself under great obligations to you," said
Madame Audibert. "He adores his daughter, and he knows you have cared for
her like a father. His daughter has drawn your portrait in very
favourable colors, and he would be extremely pleased to make your
acquaintance. Tell me when you can sup with me; the father will be here
to meet you, though unaccompanied by his daughter."

"I am delighted at what you tell me, for the young man's esteem for his
future wife will only be augmented when he finds that I am her father's
friend. I cannot come to supper, however; I will be here at six and stop
till eight."

As the lady left the choice of the day with me I fixed the day after
next, and then I repaired to my fair Venetian, to whom I told my news,
and how I had managed to get rid of the abbe.

On the day after next, just as we were sitting down to dinner, the
marchioness smilingly gave me a letter which Possano had written her in
bad but perfectly intelligible French. He had filled eight pages in his
endeavour to convince her that I was deceiving her, and to make sure he
told the whole story without concealing any circumstance to my
disadvantage. He added that I had brought two girls with me to
Marseilles; and though he did not know where I had hidden them, he was
sure that it was with them that I spent my nights.

After I had read the whole letter through, with the utmost coolness I
gave it back to her, asking her if she had had the patience to read it
through. She replied that she had run through it, but that she could not
make it out at all, as the evil genius seemed to write a sort of
outlandish dialect, which she did not care to puzzle herself over, as he
could only have wr