“I am undone!” said she.  Then she endeavoured to run away.

But the good lady-killer had posted about devoted attendants, who, without knowing what was going on, closed the hotel, barricaded the doors, and in this mansion, so large that it equalled a fourth of Paris, the Lady d’Hocquetonville was as in a desert, with no other aid than that of her patron saint and God.  Then, suspecting the truth, the poor lady trembled from head to foot and fell into a chair; and then the working of this snare, so cleverly conceived, was, with many a hearty laugh, revealed to her by her lover.  Directly the duke made a movement to approach her this woman rose and exclaimed, arming herself first with her tongue, and flashing one thousand maledictions from her eyes—­

“You will possess me—­but dead!  Ha! my lord, do not force me to a struggle which must become known to certain people.  I may yet retire, and the Sire d’Hocquetonville shall be ignorant of the sorrow with which you have forever tinged my life.  Duke, you look too often in the ladies’ faces to find time to study men’s, and you do not therefore know your man.  The Sire d’Hocquetonville would let himself be hacked to pieces in your service, so devoted is he to you, in memory of your kindness to him, and also because he is partial to you.  But as he loves so does he hate; and I believe him to be the man to bring his mace down upon your head, to take his revenge, if you but compel me to utter one cry.  Do you desire both my death and your own?  But be assured that, as an honest woman, whatever happens to me, good or evil, I shall keep no secret.  Now, will you let me go?”

The bad fellow began to whistle.  Hearing his whistling, the good woman went suddenly into the queen’s chamber, and took from a place known to her therein, a sharp stiletto.  Then, when the duke followed her to ascertain what this flight meant, “When you pass that line,” cried she, pointing to a board, “I will kill myself.”

My lord, without being in the least terrified, took a chair, placed it at the very edge of the plank in question, and commenced a glowing description of certain things, hoping to influence the mind of this brave woman, and work her to that point that her brain, her heart, and everything should be at his mercy.  Then he commenced to say to her, in that delicate manner to which princes are accustomed, that, in the first place, virtuous women pay dearly for their virtue, since in order to gain the uncertain blessings of the future, they lose all the sweetest joys of the present, because husbands were compelled, from motives of conjugal policy, not show them all the jewels in the shrine of love, since the said jewels would so affect their hearts, was so rapturously delicious, so titillatingly voluptuous, that a woman would no longer consent to dwell in the cold regions of domestic life; and he declared this marital abomination to be a great felony, because the least thing a man could