We return to the château. Everybody has surrendered to the rare pleasure of retiring early. Only Fortier awaits us, to conduct me to my room. It seems that a friend of the countess is enthusiastic about the _Revue spéculative_ and is going to espouse it under a dotal system, making it an allowance of fifty thousand francs, which it lacks. This Fortier has a mania for offering incomprehensible metaphors. "Some one is going to put fifty thousand francs into the _Revue_!" "Precisely." "And you will become?" "Editor in chief instead of director." "And the director?" "A pseudonym." I know Fortier; he will not take offense. "Now, confess that it is the countess." He smiles and immediately gallops across the faded fields of the dithyramb: "She is charming, generous, devoted to art, and without personal ambition." "Except to be loved?" "I charge myself with that." This unconstraint interests my natural curiosity, and with little contradictions powdered with some skepticism, I excite him to the point where he tells me everything. He was presented by Malaval, who remarked that his elegance of a clipped dog would turn the head of the countess. It was an embarrassing introduction, but Fortier showed wit--so he claims. There followed allurements, sly winks, the habit of quarreling with each other, an absence, several letters wherein a light tenderness fluttered. She was alone when he returned. Without speech, their arms outstretched--there they were, trembling and lovers. Fortier is incapable of inventing and, perhaps, of lying. He even has the air of finding this natural and fatal. It had to happen. "Is it not so?" "Doubtless." I take leave of him. Before departing, he asks me to furnish some pages for the first number of _la Spéculative_, new series. This line finished, I go to sleep, but why is this room called the portrait chamber? _September 13, morning_.--I have dreamed of this portrait and I seek it in every corner, in every section of the walls. The room is quite remarkably bare: a uniform gray paper; above the Empire fireplace, a looking glass which reaches to the ceiling; the bed occupies one of the sides of the floor; to the right of the door, a bookcase contains some old books; to the left is a chest of drawers topped with a new mirror; opposite are two windows; between the two windows, a dressing table and another glass. Nothing else. _September 14, evening_.--We took an excursion to Roches-Noires. Monsieur B----, who was our guide, killed a snake with a few blows of a little stick. Then, Madame Magne took the reptile and in an instant made a bracelet of the still moving creature. The countess uttered a cry, the viper had to be thrown into a hole, and I reflected upon the biblical and singular sympathy between women and serpents, for the countess cried without sincerity and Madame de B----. pitied the poor creature of the good Lord.