sounded
you well enough to be a competent adviser in this delicate and important
affair, to which the most famous events in the annals of diplomacy are
not to be compared."

"Your excellency does not do sufficient justice to a career which has
gained you such distinction."

"That's because I am an old man, my dear fellow, and have shaken off the
rust and dust of prejudices, and am able to see things as they really
are, and appreciate them at their true value. But let us return to your
love-affair. If you wish to keep it in the dark, you must avoid with the
greatest care any action which may awaken suspicion in the minds of
people who do not believe that anything is indifferent. The most
malicious and censorious will not be able to get anything but the merest
chance out of the interview I procured you today, and the accident of the
sneezing bout, defy the most ill-natured to draw any deductions; for an
eager lover does not begin his suit by sending the beloved one into
convulsions. Nobody can guess that your hellebore was used to conceal the
blush that your caresses occasioned, since it does not often happen that
an amorous combat leaves such traces; and how can you be expected to have
foreseen the lady's blushes, and to have provided yourself with a
specific against them? In short, the events of to-day will not disclose
your secret. M.---- who, although he wishes to pass for a man devoid of
jealousy, is a little jealous; M.---- himself cannot have seen anything
out of the common in my asking him to return with me, as I had business
of importance with him, and he has certainly no reasons for supposing
that I should be likely to help you to intrigue with his wife.
Furthermore, the laws of politeness would have forbidden me, under any
circumstances, offering the lady the place I offered him, and as he
prides himself on his politeness he can raise no possible objection to
the arrangement which was made. To be sure I am old and you are young--a
distinction not unimportant in a husband's eyes." After this exordium,
added the good-natured ambassador, with a laugh, "an exordium which I
have delivered in the official style of a secretary of state, let us see
where we are. Two things are necessary for you to obtain your wished-for
bliss. The first thing, which concerns you more particularly, is to make
M.---- your friend, and to conceal from him that you have conceived a
passion for his wife, and here I will aid you to the bes