leged thief to fear. She agreed
with everything I said, and it increased my love.

The honest Hungarian insisted upon giving me in advance the amount to be
paid for the post-horses at the different stages as far as Parma. We left
Cesena after dinner, but not without a contest of politeness respecting
the seats. The captain wanted me to occupy the back seat-near Henriette,
but the reader will understand how much better the seat opposite to her
suited me; therefore I insisted upon taking the bracket-seat, and had the
double advantage of shewing my politeness, and of having constantly and
without difficulty before my eyes the lovely woman whom I adored.

My happiness would have been too great if there had been no drawback to
it. But where can we find roses without thorns? When the charming
Frenchwoman uttered some of those witty sayings which proceed so
naturally from the lips of her countrywomen, I could not help pitying the
sorry face of the poor Hungarian, and, wishing to make him share my
mirth, I would undertake to translate in Latin Henriette's sallies; but
far from making him merry, I often saw his face bear a look of
astonishment, as if what I had said seemed to him rather flat. I had to
acknowledge to myself that I could not speak Latin as well as she spoke
French, and this was indeed the case. The last thing which we learn in
all languages is wit, and wit never shines so well as in jests. I was
thirty years of age before I began to laugh in reading Terence, Plautus
and Martial.

Something being the matter with the carriage, we stopped at Forli to have
it repaired. After a very cheerful supper, I retired to my room to go to
bed, thinking of nothing else but the charming woman by whom I was so
completely captivated. Along the road, Henriette had struck me as so
strange that I would not sleep in the second bed in their room. I was
afraid lest she should leave her old comrade to come to my bed and sleep
with me, and I did not know how far the worthy captain would have put up
with such a joke. I wished, of course, to possess that lovely creature,
but I wanted everything to be settled amicably, for I felt some respect
for the brave officer.

Henriette had nothing but the military costume in which she stood, not
any woman's linen, not even one chemise. For a change she took the
captain's shirt. Such a state of things was so new to me that the
situation seemed to me a complete enigma.

In Bologna, excited by an exce