Everybody laughed at this excuse except myself, and I pitied her, as I could see that she was of very low origin.

Next day she came and asked me to give her a letter of introduction for Avignon.  I wrote her out two; one to M. Audifret the banker, and the other to the landlady of the inn.  In the evening she returned me the letter to the banker, saying that it was not necessary for their purposes.  At the same time she asked me to examine the letter closely, to see if it was really the same document I had given her.  I did so, and said I was sure it was my letter.

She laughed, and told me I was mistaken as it was only a copy.

“Impossible!”

She called her husband, who came with the letter in his hand.

I could doubt no longer, and said to him,—­

“You are a man of talents, for it is much harder to imitate a handwriting than an engraving.  You ought to make this talent serve you in good stead; but be careful, or it may cost you your life.”

The next day the couple left Aix.  In ten years I saw them again under the name of Count and Countess Pellegrini.

At the present period he is in a prison which he will probably never leave, and his wife is happy, maybe, in a convent.

CHAPTER X

My Departure—­Letter from Henriette—­Marsellies—­History of Nina—­Nice—­Turin—­Lugano—­Madame De****

As soon as I had regained my usual strength, I went to take leave of the Marquis d’Argens and his brother.  I dined with them, pretending not to observe the presence of the Jesuit, and I then spent three delightful hours in conversation with the learned and amiable Marquis d’Argens.  He told me a number of interesting anecdotes about the private life of Frederick ii.  No doubt the reader would like to have them, but I lack the energy to set them down.  Perhaps some other day when the mists about Dux have dispersed, and some rays of the sun shine in upon me, I shall commit all these anecdotes to paper, but now I have not the courage to do so.

Frederick had his good and his bad qualities, like all great men, but when every deduction on the score of his failings has been made, he still remains the noblest figure in the eighteenth century.

The King of Sweden, who has been assassinated, loved to excite hatred that he might have the glory of defying it to do its worst.  He was a despot at heart, and he came to a despot’s end.  He might have foreseen a violent death, for throughout his life he was always provoking men to the point of despair.  There can be no comparison between him and Frederick.

The Marquis d’Argens made me a present of all his works, and on my asking him if I could congratulate myself on possessing the whole number, he said yes, with the exception of a fragment of autobiography which he had written in his youth, and which he had afterwards suppressed.