"'And you will wear a cloak?'
"'I have one, mademoiselle; but I haven't a broad-brimmed hat.'
"'Buy one.'
"'To be sure; I didn't think of that.'
"'And think about where you will take me.'
"'I'll think about it.'
"'Now go; until to-night!'
"I can't tell you, my dear Charles, all the thoughts that assailed me as soon as I had persuaded my lover to abduct me. I was glad, and sorry; I looked forward with delight to being abducted, for I had read many novels, and, unluckily, of the sort in which one never finds a truthful line; in which nature, constantly perverted and distorted, like the language of the characters, is made to produce only such individuals as never existed, with an accompaniment of stilted, bombastic phrases; and whose moral is that vice or crime is always triumphant over virtue and honesty. Is it not true, my friend, that those are villainous books, and that if by chance they contain charm of style and poetic thoughts the author is all the more culpable, since he employs his talent solely to disgust us with what is good and beautiful, with what has always been held in respect?
"As I was saying, I was intensely excited, in a sort of delirium, in fact. I had had no mother from childhood! Abandoned at an early age to the care of paid dependents, never having found a heart into which I could pour out my thoughts and feelings, treated by my father like a little girl, or rather like a boy who was left to himself all day to raise the deuce, I had no one but myself. Ah! if my mother had lived! how many, many things would not have happened to me! She would have made me more prudent and careful; and it is probable that you would not be supping with me to-night.
"I had no thought of drawing back. At the appointed hour, I stole out of the house, wrapped in my pelisse, with a veil over my face, carrying a small bundle, in which, I remember, I had put a ball dress, a pair of bracelets, a package of candy, a toothbrush, three pairs of gloves, two cakes of chocolate, a fan, and a shoehorn.