her a
husband, and would have been glad enough to get rid of her by my making
her my mistress.

We shall hear more of her in the course of five or six years, as also of
my excellent cook, Anna Midel, to whom I gave a present of four hundred
florins. She married shortly afterwards, and when I visited the town
again I found her unhappy.

I could not make up my mind to forgive Le Duc, who rode on the coachman's
box, and when we were in Paris, half-way along the Rue St. Antoine, I
made him take his trunk and get down; and I left him there without a
character, in spite of his entreaties. I never heard of him again, but I
still miss him, for, in spite of his great failings, he was an excellent
servant. Perhaps I should have called to mind the important services he
had rendered me at Stuttgart, Soleure, Naples, Florence, and Turin; but I
could not pass over his impudence in compromising me before the Augsburg
magistrate. If I had not succeeded in bringing a certain theft home to
him, it would have been laid to my door, and I should have been
dishonoured.

I had done a good deal in saving him from justice, and, besides, I had
rewarded him liberally for all the special services he had done me.

From Augsburg I went to Bale by way of Constance, where I stayed at the
dearest inn in Switzerland. The landlord, Imhoff, was the prince of
cheats, but his daughters were amusing, and after a three days' stay I
continued my journey. I got to Paris on the last day of the year 1761,
and I left the coach at the house in the Rue du Bacq, where my good angel
Madame d'Urfe had arranged me a suite of rooms with the utmost elegance.

I spent three weeks in these rooms without going anywhere, in order to
convince the worthy lady that I had only returned to Paris to keep my
word to her, and make her be born again a man.

We spent the three weeks in making preparations for this divine
operation, and our preparations consisted of devotions to each of the
seven planets on the days consecrated to each of the intelligences. After
this I had to seek, in a place which the spirits would point out to me,
for a maiden, the daughter of an adept, whom I was to impregnate with a
male child in a manner only known to the Fraternity of the Rosy Cross.
Madame d'Urfe was to receive the child into her arms the moment it was
born; and to keep it beside her in bed for seven days. At the end of the
seven days she would die with her lips on the lips of the child,