"The Spanish women are more closely confined, and more amorous than ours. Love is managed in that country by a sort of ambassadresses, who have orders to catechize strangers, to make proposals to them, to conduct them forward and backward; and the ladies undertake the task of making them happy. I was not obliged to go through this ceremony, thanks to the conjuncture. A great revolution had lately placed a prince of the blood royal of France on the throne of this kingdom: his arrival and coronation occasioned festivals at the court, where I then appeared. I was accosted at a masquerade; and a meeting was proposed me for the next day: I accepted the challenge, and went into a little house, where I found only one man mask'd, his nose wrapp'd in his cloak, who delivered me a letter, in which Donna Oropeza put off the party to the next day at the same hour. I returned, and was introduced into an appartment sumptuously furnish'd, and well illuminated with wax tapers. My goddess did not make me wait long. She enter'd just at my heels, and rush'd into my arms without speaking a word, or taking off her mask. Was she ugly? Was she handsome? was what I knew not. I only perceived on the couch, to which she drew me, that she was young, well-made, and loved pleasure. When she found herself satisfied with my panegyricks, she unmask'd, and shewed me the original of this picture, which you see in my snuff-box." Selim open'd, and at the same time presented the favorite with a gold box, of exquisite work, and richly adorn'd with jewels. "The present is gallant," says Mangogul: "what I esteem most in it," added the favorite, "is the portrait. What eyes! What a mouth! what a neck! But is not all this hightened?" "So little, madam," replied Selim, "that Oropeza would probably have fixed me at Madrid, if her husband, informed of our commerce, had not disturbed it by his threats. I loved Oropeza, but I loved life better still. Besides, my governor was not of opinion, that I should expose myself to be poniarded by the husband, for the sake of enjoying his wife some few months more. Wherefore I wrote to the fair Spanish Donna a very moving farewel letter, which I stole out of some romance of that country, and set out for France.