"Monsieur de Mesnil was not at all unaware of the influence of the maid in such pursuits as that in which he was then engaged, and, on his first visit to the Prés Vallée, he found an opportunity of holding a long conference with me, the result of which was no small increase of hope on his part, and considerable profits on mine. Although he was, it is true, one of those men who call themselves men of pleasure, and who make intrigue not only a business, but a toilsome one, in the present instance I found that he had been drawn beyond all cold calculations, and that he was certainly in love as deeply and passionately as any boy. He besought me, eagerly and anxiously, to obtain for him but a lock of my mistress's hair; and of course this was no very difficult undertaking. The lock was easily cut away unperceived, while I was superintending her toilet; and, having enclosed it in the locket which the Count had given me for the purpose, I took the liberty of adding thereto part of a broad blue riband which my mistress had bought just before we quitted Paris, trusting that the ingenuity of Gaspard and myself would easily find some means of bringing these objects under the notice of Monsieur de Villardin. The next thing was, if possible, to make you the bearer of the packet to Monsieur de Mesnil; and Gaspard caused one of the younger pages to give the locket itself, carefully wrapped in numerous envelopes, into your hands, begging you, the first time you passed in hunting near the château of the Count, to deliver it to his intendant. The outer paper was addressed to the intendant, the inner bore the superscription of Monsieur de Mesnil, written in a hand as nearly similar to that of the Duchess as I could make it. The boy who gave it to you was told, in case of after-inquiry on the part of Monsieur de Villardin, to say boldly that Gaspard gave it him; Gaspard was to put it upon me, and I was at once to avow, that I had received the packet from Madame de Villardin, each declaring our ignorance of the contents, but Gaspard vowing that he had heard the Duchess direct me to place it carefully in your hands, as you would know what to do with it. In addition to this, I was to excuse my not having given it to you myself, on the score of my dislike to you; and Gaspard was to make the same apology, adding, that he had seen too much of your cogging with Monsieur de Mesnil to have anything to do with the business. The next part of our plan was to have you so well watched, that we should obtain information of when you were likely to deliver the packet, which we well knew you would do boldly and without concealment; and then to excite the suspicions of the Duke, who, we doubted not, would instantly stop the packet and examine its contents.