The occasion to relate it to her was furnished by the victim herself, fifteen days after I had begun to put at work what I proudly called my experience. The marquis had been told that one volume of the Encyclopedia was devoted to cards. He wished to find there how to play some old games such as Imperiale, Ombre, and Manilla. This brilliant idea had come to him after breakfast, on seeing in a journal a report of a new game called Poker, apropos of which the journalist gave a list of old-fashioned games. When this maniac had conceived a fancy he could not wait, and his daughter was obliged to go at once to the library, where I was occupied in taking notes. I laid aside Helvétius upon the “Mind,” which I had discovered among some other books of the eighteenth century. I placed myself at the disposition of Mlle. de Jussat to take down the volume which she desired, and, when she took it from my hands, she said with her habitual grace: “I hope that we shall find here some game in which you can take a hand with us. We are so afraid that you do not feel at home here, you are always so sad.” She said these words as if asking pardon for an indelicacy, which had impressed me before, and escaping the familiarity of her remark by a “we” which I too well knew to be untruthful. Her voice was so gentle, we were so alone that the time seemed to have come to explain my feigned sadness. “Ah! mademoiselle,” I answered, “if you only knew my history.” If Charlotte had not been the credulous creature, the romantic child that she was, in spite of her two or three seasons in Paris, she would have seen that I was beginning a tale prepared beforehand, by this introduction, by the turn of the sentences with which I continued. I was too clumsy, too awkwardly affected. I told her then that I had been betrothed at Clermont to a young girl, but secretly. I thought to make this adventure more poetical in her eyes by insinuating that this girl was a foreigner, a Russian visiting one of her relations. I added that this girl had allowed me to tell her that I loved her, and she had also told me that she loved me. We had exchanged vows, then she had gone away. A rich marriage offered, and she had betrayed me for money.