re, who was
very fertile in resources, suggested to the handsome Pole that he might
just as well transform himself into a handsome Polish lady, so that he
might, under the cover of the ever feminine, be able to visit her
undisturbed, and as it was winter, the thick, heavy, capacious dress
assisted the metamorphosis.

The lady, accordingly, bought a number of very beautiful costumes for her
lover, and in the course of a few days she told her husband that a
charming young Polish lady, whose acquaintance she had made in the
summer at Carlsbad, was going to spend the winter in Vienna, and would
very frequently come and see her. Her husband listened to her with the
greatest indifference, for it was one of his fundamental rules never to
make love to any of his wife's female friends, and he went to his club as
usual at night, and the next day had forgotten all about the Polish lady.

And now, half an hour after the husband had left the house, a cab drove
up and a tall, slim, heavily veiled lady got out and went up the thickly
carpeted stairs, only to be metamorphosed into the most ardent lover in
the young woman's _boudoir_. The young Pole grew accustomed to his female
attire so quickly that he even ventured to appear in the streets in it,
and when he began to make conquests, and aristocratic gentlemen and
successful speculators on the Stock Exchange looked at him significantly,
and even followed him, he took a real pleasure in the part he was
playing, and began to understand the pleasure a coquette feels in
tormenting men.

The young Pole became more and more daring, until at last one evening he
went to a private box at the opera, wrapped in an ermine cloak, on to
which his dark, false curls fell in heavy waves.

A handsome young man in a box opposite to him ogled him incessantly from
the first moment, and the young Pole responded in a manner which made the
other bolder every minute. At the end of the third act, the box opener
brought the fictitious Venus a small bouquet with a card concealed in it,
on which was written in pencil: "You are the most lovely woman in the
world, and I implore you on my knees to grant me an interview." The young
Pole read the name of the man who had been captivated so quickly, and,
with a peculiar smile, wrote on a card on which nothing but the name
"Valeska" was printed: "After the theater," and sent Cupid's messenger
back with it.

When the spurious Venus was about to enter her carriage aft