'There M. le Duc de Lennox overrated my influence, for old M. de la Ferte Imbault, who has just been appointed Colonel-General des Ecossais, is a venerable military bear, who served under Henri Champernon and the Marshal de Tavannes, and is so old that 'tis said he really remembers the last tournament in the Place de Carrousel; so on him my smiles would be lavished in vain. Yet, take courage--I am your friend, and you have this night done me a greater service than you are aware of. Take some more wine--you still look pale,' said she, passing her soft warm hand caressingly over my cheek and forehead; 'but now tell me--and pray excuse the question--have you ever--' 'What, madame?' 'Been in love?' The blood mounted to my temples as I almost quailed under the keen eye of the beautiful questioner, and felt my heart beat strongly--almost wildly, though she was my senior by at least fifteen years. 'In love--no, madame; but why that question?' 'Because to be successful now, in France, you must study the art, or rather theory of love as assiduously as that of war. You must learn to laugh at everything--to blush at nothing, and to fight with every man who affronts you; but pardon me, I am forgetting the proverb--_fier comme un Ecossais_! Among us in Paris, an assignation and a campaign are nearly of equal importance; and love sheds its divine halo over everything. As Cervantes says, a soldier without a mistress is like a ship without a rudder, or a pilot without his compass. Thus M. de Chatillon is so enamoured of the lovely Mademoiselle le Guerchi that he wears one of her silk garters round his right arm in battle; and should you fall in love with me, I will give you one of mine.' 'Oh, madame!' I murmured, overpowered by the beauty of the speaker and perplexed by the strange morality she displayed--a code which I now heard for the first time. 'And Monseigneur le Duc de Bellegarde, Peer and Marshal of France, the declared lover of the Queen Regent, before taking leave of her Majesty, to command the army on the frontiers, prayed, that as a parting favour she would lay her beautiful hand but once on the hilt of his sword. Thus it is, we still foster the spirit of gallantry which Anne of Austria brought among us from old Castille and the cavaliers of Madrid. But while I am running on in this way, monsieur my friend, I am quite forgetting that the night has passed, that the morning draws on apace, and that, as you have never been in love, it could not be an affair of the heart which made you leave your country so young. What was it then?' 'An affair of the dagger, madame,' said I, with a bitter sigh. 'Drink again, refresh yourself, and collect your thoughts before you speak.' And while doing so, I will here insert a little paragraph for my reader's information.