"What do you think, Marie, are you pleasing to him or not?"

Marie blushed. "It seems," said she, "that I please him."

"How do you know?"

"Because he made me an offer of marriage."

"He made you an offer of marriage! When?"

"Last year, two months before your arrival."

"You did not accept?"

"Evidently not, as you see. Alexis is a most intelligent man, of
an excellent family and not without fortune, but the mere idea that
beneath the crown, on my marriage day, I should be obliged to kiss
him before every one! No! no! not for any thing in the world."

Marie's words opened my eyes. I understood the persistence of Alexis
in aspersing her character. He had probably remarked our mutual
inclination, and was trying to turn us from each other. The words
which had provoked our quarrel seemed to me the more infamous, as
instead of being a vulgar joke, it was deliberate calumny. The
desire to punish this shameless liar became so strong that I waited
impatiently the favorable moment. I had not long to wait. The next
day, occupied composing an elegy, biting my pen in the expectation
of a rhyme, Alexis knocked at my window. I put down my pen, took my
sword, and went out of the house.