"To tell the truth I never thought of that. The chief thing for me is to get so enraptured with one of the sisters, that she should banish the other two from my mind. But at my age it is difficult to grow enthusiastic."
"Then all three are equally irresistible?"
"Quite so, all of them made to be kissed, and each of them a different style of beauty; so that when one sees them, together one feels that one could never be satisfied with only one of them."
"Your account is given in too vague and extravagant terms. I wish to have it in proper order, and with every detail. First then comes the fair, then the auburn, then the dark one; or how do they follow in age?"
"I don't know."
"Well, then we will arrange them according to size, and begin with the smallest. Is it the auburn haired young lady?"
"I really cannot tell."
"You seem to have employed your time badly, or was it the triple fascination which had such power over your feelings from the first, that your senses left you?"
"Certainly I cannot excuse myself on that score," he replied laughing. "I do not remember a more disagreeable sensation than I had yesterday on my way to L----. A visit to the dentist is a pleasure trip compared to it. Several times I was on the point of jumping out of the carriage, but then I reflected that my cousin's horses would soon have overtaken me, and then I should have been delivered over ignominiously into the hands of my evil destiny. For on this point, my friend, who is in every other respect so yielding, knows no mercy. So I plucked up courage, and thinking over all the evil that had ever befallen me in the course of my life I tried to find comfort by repeating that in fact it all amounted very much to the same thing. At last we arrived. I had stipulated from the beginning that my cousin should not say a word of my real purpose, either to the father, or to the young ladies. The doctor was not at home when we first arrived, so we only found the sisters of fate in the neatest of dresses, fresh and charming like three rose buds on one stalk. Yes in truth they equalled the three graces, and their manners too were far from being provincial. I could not tire of looking at them."
"The beginning seems promising."