t a farthing, or Rome
with twenty-five louis."

Thereupon I called Clairmont, and told him to put the abbe out.

I was in a hurry to have done with the Corticelli affair, and went to the
house in the Faubourg St. Antoine, where I found a kindly and
intelligent-looking man and woman, and all the arrangements of the house
satisfactory and appropriate to the performance of secret cures. I saw
the room and the bath destined for the new boarder, everything was clean
and neat, and I gave them a hundred crowns, for which they handed me a
receipt. I told them that the lady would either come in the course of the
day, or on the day following.

I went to dine with Madame d'Urfe and the young Count d'Aranda. After
dinner the worthy marchioness talked to me for a long time of her
pregnancy, dwelling on her symptoms, and on the happiness that would be
hers when the babe stirred within her. I had put to a strong restrain
upon myself to avoid bursting out laughing. When I had finished with her
I went to the Corticelli, who called me her saviour and her guardian
angel. I gave her two louis to get some linen out of pawn, and promised
to come and see her before I left Paris, to give her a hundred crowns,
which would take her back to Bologna. Then I waited on Madame du Rumain
who had said farewell to society for three weeks.

This lady had an excellent heart, and was pretty as well, but she had so
curious a society-manner that she often made me laugh most heartily. She
talked of the sun and moon as if they were two Exalted Personages, to
whom she was about to be presented. She was once discussing with me the
state of the elect in heaven, and said that their greatest happiness was,
no doubt, to love God to distraction, for she had no idea of calm and
peaceful bliss.

I gave her the incense for the fumigation, and told her what psalms to
recite, and then we had a delicious supper. She told her chamber-maid to
escort me at ten o'clock to a room on the second floor which she had
furnished for me with the utmost luxury, adding,--

"Take care that the Chevalier de Seingalt is able to come into my room at
five o'clock to-morrow."

At nine o'clock I placed her legs in a bath of lukewarm water, and taught
her how to suffumigate. Her legs were moulded by the hand of the Graces
and I wiped them amorously, laughing within myself at her expression of
gratitude, and I then laid her in bed, contenting myself with a solemn
kiss on her pretty foreh