naturally from the lips of her countrywomen, I could not help pitying the
sorry face of the poor Hungarian, and, wishing to make him share my
mirth, I would undertake to translate in Latin Henriette's sallies; but
far from making him merry, I often saw his face bear a look of
astonishment, as if what I had said seemed to him rather flat. I had to
acknowledge to myself that I could not speak Latin as well as she spoke
French, and this was indeed the case. The last thing which we learn in
all languages is wit, and wit never shines so well as in jests. I was
thirty years of age before I began to laugh in reading Terence, Plautus
and Martial.

Something being the matter with the carriage, we stopped at Forli to have
it repaired. After a very cheerful supper, I retired to my room to go to
bed, thinking of nothing else but the charming woman by whom I was so
completely captivated. Along the road, Henriette had struck me as so
strange that I would not sleep in the second bed in their room. I was
afraid lest she should leave her old comrade to come to my bed and sleep
with me, and I did not know how far the worthy captain would have put up
with such a joke. I wished, of course, to possess that lovely creature,
but I wanted everything to be settled amicably, for I felt some respect
for the brave officer.

Henriette had nothing but the military costume in which she stood, not
any woman's linen, not even one chemise. For a change she took the
captain's shirt. Such a state of things was so new to me that the
situation seemed to me a complete enigma.

In Bologna, excited by an excellent supper and by the amorous passion
which was every hour burning more fiercely in me, I asked her by what
singular adventure she had become the friend of the honest fellow who