I had got master of my secret just in time to turn these honors to some little account; otherwise, as is commonly the case, I should have dined or supped a single time or two round, and then by translating French looks and attitudes into plain English, I should presently have seen that I had got hold of the couvert* of some more entertaining guest; and in course of time should have resigned all my places one after another, merely upon the principle that I could not keep them.  As it was, things did not go much amiss.

* Plate, napkin, knife, fork, and spoon.

I had the honor of being introduced to the old Marquis de B——.  In days of yore he had signalized himself by some small feats of chivalry in the Cour d’Amour, and had dressed himself out to the idea of tilts and tournaments ever since.  The Marquis de B——­ wished to have it thought the affair was somewhere else than in his brain.  “He could like to take a trip to England,” and asked much of the English ladies.  “Stay where you are, I beseech you, Monsieur le Marquis,” said I.  “Les Messieurs Anglais can scarce get a kind look from them as it is.”  The marquis invited me to supper.

M. P——­, the farmer-general, was just as inquisitive about our taxes.  They were very considerable, he heard.  “If we knew but how to collect them,” said I, making him a low bow.

I could never have been invited to M. P——­’s concerts upon any other terms.

I had been misrepresented to Mme. de Q——­ as an esprit—­Mme. de Q——­ was an esprit herself; she burned with impatience to see me and hear me talk.  I had not taken my seat before I saw she did not care a sou whether I had any wit or no.  I was let in to be convinced she had.  I call Heaven to witness I never once opened the door of my lips.

Mme. de V——­ vowed to every creature she met, “She had never had a more improving conversation with a man in her life.”

There are three epochs in the empire of a Frenchwoman—­she is coquette, then deist, then devote.  The empire during these is never lost—­she only changes her subjects.  When thirty-five years and more have unpeopled her dominion of the slaves of love she repeoples it with slaves of infidelity, and, then with the slaves of the church.

Mme. de V——­ was vibrating between the first of these epochs; the color of the rose was fading fast away; she ought to have been a deist five years before the time I had the honor to pay my first visit.

She placed me upon the same sofa with her for the sake of disputing the point of religion more closely.  In short, Mme. de V——­ told me she believed nothing.

I told Mme. de V——­ it might be her principle, but I was sure it could not be her interest, to level the outworks, without which I could not conceive how such a citadel as hers could be defended; that there was not a more dangerous thing in the world than for a beauty to be a deist; that it was a debt I owed my creed not to conceal it from her; that I had not been five minutes upon the sofa beside her before I had begun to form designs; and what is it but the sentiments of religion, and the persuasion they had existed in her breast, which could have checked them as they rose up?