"I am truly grateful, sir, to the chance which has given me the pleasure of your acquaintance. Without the assistance of your remarks I should have been less successful than you have been in developing certain ideas which we possess in common. I beg of you that you will give me leave to publish this conversation. Statements which you and I find pregnant with high political conceptions, others perhaps will think characterized by more or less cutting irony, and I shall pass for a clever fellow in the eyes of both parties." While I thus tried to express my thanks to the viscount (the first husband after my heart that I had met with), he took me once more through his apartments, where everything seemed to be beyond criticism. I was about to take leave of him, when opening the door of a little boudoir he showed me a room with an air which seemed to say, "Is there any way by which the least irregularity should occur without my seeing it?" I replied to this silent interrogation by an inclination of the head, such as guests make to their Amphytrion when they taste some exceptionally choice dish. "My whole system," he said to me in a whisper, "was suggested to me by three words which my father heard Napoleon pronounce at a crowded council of state, when divorce was the subject of conversation. 'Adultery,' he exclaimed, 'is merely a matter of opportunity!' See, then, I have changed these accessories of crime, so that they become spies," added the councillor, pointing out to me a divan covered with tea-colored cashmere, the cushions of which were slightly pressed. "Notice that impression,--I learn from it that my wife has had a headache, and has been reclining there." We stepped toward the divan, and saw the word FOOL lightly traced upon the fatal cushion, by four Things that I know not, plucked by lover's hand From Cypris' orchard, where the fairy band Are dancing, once by nobles thought to be Worthy an order of new chivalry, A brotherhood, wherein, with script of gold, More mortal men than gods should be enrolled. "Nobody in my house has black hair!" said the husband, growing pale. I hurried away, for I was seized with an irresistible fit of laughter, which I could not easily overcome. "That man has met his judgment day!" I said to myself; "all the barriers by which he has surrounded her have only been instrumental in adding to the intensity of her pleasures!" This idea saddened me. The adventure destroyed from summit to foundation three of my most important Meditations, and the catholic infallibility of my book was assailed in its most essential point. I would gladly have paid to establish the fidelity of the Viscountess V----- a sum as great as very many people would have offered to secure her surrender. But alas! my money will now be kept by me.