with my inheritance is being wound up. In
short, as I am positive that the first thing she will do will be to show
you her letter, I expect you, if your friendship is good for anything,
to pretend to believe it. Upon this condition only will I continue my
confidences; and I suspend them until you have given me your word of
honour to observe discretion.

Having received your promise, Louis, I now resume my narrative at the
point where I broke off. Now you will see what you might have lost.

Just one word by way of preface.

I am relating to you, my dear friend, a story which is more especially
remarkable for the multitude of unaccustomed sensations with which it
abounds, and which I experience at every step--for my amourous
adventures, as you will agree, bear no resemblance to the ready-made
class of amours. It would really have been a great loss for the future
of psychology, if the hero of such adventures had not happened to be, as
I am, a philosopher capable of bringing to bear upon them powers of
correct analysis.

First of all, if you wish really to understand the peculiarities of my
situation, you must banish from your mind all that you have ever known
of such amours as come within the reach of the poor Lovelaces of our
everyday world. Those uncertain, ephemeral connections of lovers and
mistresses whose only law is their caprice, and which mere caprice can
dissolve; those immoral and dubious ties whose permanence nothing can
guarantee, and in which one jostles one's rival of yesterday and of the
morrow--in all amours of this sort there is something precarious and
humiliating. With our habits and customs no secret, no mystery, is
possible; for however loving or beloved a woman may be, her beauty is
exposed to every eye. It is like the enjoyment of communal property. In
my harem, on the contrary, the charms of Zouhra, Nazli, and Kondje-Gul,
concealed from all other eyes, have never excited any passions but mine;
my tranquil possession is undisturbed by the anxious jealousies which
recollections of a former rival always awaken. Nor is the future less
assured than the present, for their lives are my property; they are my
slaves, and I their master, in charge of their souls. So much for my
preface; now I will proceed.

I will not disparage your powers of memory by reminding you that my
interesting narrative was broken off _au premier lendemain_--at the
first glimmer of our honeymoon. The complete bliss, the enchant