I left you, I believe, as we were leaving the inn where I passed such an amusing night and where my virtue thought it was going to be shipwrecked upon leaving the harbor.--We rode away together, going in the same direction.--My companions went into ecstasies over the beauty of my horse, which is a thoroughbred and one of the fastest horses in the world;--that fact increased my stature at least half a cubit in their estimation, and they added the merits of my steed to my own merits.--They seemed to be afraid, however, that he was too frisky and high-spirited for me.--I told them they need have no fear, and to show them that there was no danger I made him prance and curvet--then I jumped a wall of considerable height and put him at a gallop. The party tried in vain to overtake me; I turned when I was some distance ahead of them and rode back at full speed; just before I met them, I checked my horse when all four feet were in the air and stopped him short: which is, as you may or may not know, a genuine feat. From esteem they passed without transition to the most profound respect. They did not suspect that a young student, recently graduated from the University, was so accomplished a horseman as that. That discovery served me better than if they had discovered in me all the cardinal virtues; instead of treating me as a boy, they addressed in a tone of obsequious familiarity that pleased me. In laying aside my clothing, I had not laid aside my pride:--being a woman no longer, I determined to be a thorough man and not to be content to have simply the external appearance of one.--I had determined to achieve as a cavalier, the triumphs I could no longer aspire to as a woman. What disturbed me most was to ascertain how I should set about procuring a stock of courage; for courage and skill in bodily exercises are the means by which a man most easily establishes a reputation. It is not that I am timid for a woman, and I have not the idiotic pusillanimity that we see in some women; but it is a long distance to the reckless, fierce brutality that is the glory of the men, and it was my intention to become a young blood, a swash-buckler, like my gentlemen of the upper circles, in order to secure a good footing in society and to enjoy all the advantages of my metamorphosis. But I saw in the sequel that nothing was easier and that the receipt was of the simplest.