Not content with this, he went on in his usual gross and displeasing manner to enumerate or to forge those various particulars of her personal charms which he thought most likely to steel me against her attractions. “Thank Heaven, at least,” thought I, “that she has gone!” Scarcely had this pious gratulation flowed from my heart, before the door was burst open, and, pale, trembling, eyes on fire, hands clenched, forth stalked the lady in question. A wonderful proof how much sooner a woman would lose her character than allow it to be called not worth the losing! She entered, and had all the furies of Hades lent her their tongues, she could not have been more eloquent. It would have been a very pleasant scene if one had not been a partner in it. The old Abbe, with his keen, astute marked face, struggling between surprise, fear, the sense of the ridiculous, and the certainty of losing his mistress; the lady, foaming at the mouth, and shaking her clenched hand most menacingly at her traducer; myself endeavouring to pacify, and acting, as one does at such moments, mechanically, though one flatters one’s self afterwards that one acted solely from wisdom. But the Abbe’s mistress was by no means content with vindicating herself: she retaliated, and gave so minute a description of the Abbe’s own qualities and graces, coupled with so any pleasing illustrations, that in a very little time his coolness forsook him, and he grew in as great a rage as herself. At last she flew out of the room. The Abbe, trembling with passion, shook me most cordially by the hand, grinned from ear to ear, said it was a capital joke, wished me good-by as if he loved me better than his eyes, and left the house my most irreconcilable and bitter foe! How could it be otherwise? The rivalship the Abbe might have forgiven; such things happened every day to him: but the having been made so egregiously ridiculous the Abbe could not forgive; and the Abbe’s was a critical age for jesting on these matters, sixty or so. And then such unpalatable sarcasms on his appearance! “‘Tis all over in that quarter,” said I to myself, “but we may find another,” and I drove out that very day to pay my respects to the Regent.