I asked her questions as I had done the evening before, and demanded explanations. She eluded the former, and replied in an evasive manner to the latter, yet always after so witty a fashion that within a quarter of an hour I felt no scruples whatever in regard to my liaison with her. While conversing she passed her fingers through my hair, tapped me gently on the cheeks, and softly kissed my forehead. She chatted and chatted in a pretty mocking way, in a style at once elegantly polished and yet familiar and altogether like a great lady, such as I have never since heard from the lips of any human being. She was then seated upon the easy-chair beside the bed. In a little while she slipped one of her arms around my neck, and I felt her heart beating passionately against me. It was indeed a charming and handsome real woman, a veritable marchioness whom I found beside me, poor student of seventeen! There was more than enough to make one lose his head, so I lost mine. I did not know very well what was going to happen, but I felt a vague presentiment that it would displease the marquis. "And Monsieur le Marquis, on the wall up there--what will he say?" The lion's skin had fallen to the floor, and the soft lilac-colored buskins, filigreed with silver, were lying beside my shoes. "He will not say anything," replied the marchioness, laughing heartily. "Do you suppose he ever sees anything? Besides, even should he see, he is the most philosophical and inoffensive husband in the world. He is used to such things. Do you love me, little one?" "Indeed I do, ever so much!--ever so much!" Morning dawned. My mistress stole away. The day seemed to me frightfully long. At last evening came. The same things happened as on the evening before, and the second night left no regrets for the first. The marchioness became more and more adorable, and this state of affairs continued for a long time. As I never slept at night, I wore a somnolent expression in the day-time which did not augur well for me with my uncle. He suspected something. He probably listened at the door and heard everything, for one fine morning he entered my room so brusquely that Antoinette had scarcely time to get back to her place on the tapestry. He was followed by a tapestry-hanger with pincers and a ladder. He looked at me with a shrewd and severe expression which convinced me that he knew all. "This Marchioness de T---- is certainly crazy. What the devil could have put it into her head to fall in love with a brat like that?" muttered my uncle between his teeth. "She promised to behave herself. "Jean, take that tapestry down, roll it up, and put it in the garret." Every word my uncle spoke went through my heart like a poniard-thrust. Jean rolled up my sweetheart Omphale, otherwise the Marchioness Antoinette de T----, together with Hercules, or the Marquis de T----, and carried the whole thing off to the garret. I could not restrain my tears.