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three people, and she durst say the gentleman would do anything to accommodate matters. I left not the lady a moment to make a conjecture about it, so instantly made a declaration that I would do anything in my power.

As this did not amount to an absolute surrender of my bed-chamber, I still felt myself so much the proprietor as to have a right to do the honours of it; so I desired the lady to sit down, pressed her into the warmest seat, called for more wood, desired the hostess to enlarge the plan of the supper, and to favour us with the very best wine.

The lady had scarce warmed herself five minutes at the fire before she began to turn her head back, and give a look at the beds: and the oftener she cast her eyes that way, the more they returned perplexed. -I felt for her—and for myself; for in a few minutes, what by her looks, and the case itself, I found myself as much embarrassed as it was possible the lady could be herself.

That the beds we were to lay in were in one and the same room was enough, simply by itself, to have excited all this;-but the position of them (for they stood parallel, and so very close to each other as only to allow a space for a small wicker-chair betwixt them) rendered the affair still more oppressive to us;-they

were fixed up, moreover, near the fire; and the projection of the chimney on one side, and a large beam which crossed the room on the other, formed a kind of recess for them that was no way favourable to the nicety of our sensations-if anything could have added to it, it was that the two beds were both of them so very small as to cut us off from every idea of the lady and the maid lying together, which, in either of them, could it have been feasible, my lying beside them, though a thing not to be wished, yet there was nothing in it so terrible which the imagination might not have passed over without torment.

As for the little room within, it offered little or no consolation to us: 'twas a damp, cold closet, with a half-dismantled window-shutter, and with a window which had neither glass nor oil-paper in it to keep out the tempest of the night. I did not endeavour to stifle my cough when the lady gave a peep into it; so it reduced the case in course to this alternative, -that the lady should sacrifice her health to her feelings, and take up with the closet herself, and abandon the bed next mine to her maid,—or, that the girl should take the closet, etc.

The lady was a Piedmontese of about thirty, with a glow of health in her cheeks. The maid was a Lyonoise of twenty, and as brisk and lively a French

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girl as ever moved. There were difficulties every way, and the obstacle of the stone in the road, which brought us into the distress, great as it appeared while the peasants were removing it, was but a pebble to what lay in our ways now-I have only to add that it did not lessen the weight, which hung upon our spirits, that we were both too delicate to communicate what we felt to each other upon the occasion.

We sat down to supper; and, had we not had more generous wine to it than a little inn in Savoy could have furnished, our tongues had been tied up till necessity herself had set them at liberty;-but the lady having a few bottles of Burgundy in her voiture, sent down her Fille de Chambre for a couple of them; so that, by the time supper was over, and we were left alone, we felt ourselves inspired with a strength of mind, sufficient to talk, at least, without reserve, upon our situation. We turned it in every way, and debated and considered it in all kinds of lights in the course of a two hours negotiation; at the end of which the articles were settled finally betwixt us, and stipulated for in form and manner of a treaty of peace,—and, I believe, with as much religion and good faith on both sides as in any treaty which has yet had the honour of being handed down to posterity.

They were as follows:

First. As the right of the bedchamber is in Monsieur,—and he thinking the bed next to the fire to be warmest, he insists upon the concession, on the lady's side, of taking up with it.

Granted on the part of Madame, with a proviso, That as the curtains of that bed are of a flimsy, transparent cotton, and appear likewise too scanty to draw close, that the Fille de Chambre shall fasten up the opening, either by corking pins or needle and thread, in such a manner as shall be deemed a sufficient barrier on the side of Monsieur.

Second. It is required, on the part of Madame, that Monsieur shall lay the whole night through in his robe de chambre.

Rejected in as much as Monsieur is not worth a robe de chambre; he having nothing in his portmanteau but six shirts and a black silk pair of breeches.

The mentioning the silk pair of breeches made an entire change of the article,-for the breeches were accepted as an equivalent for the robe de chambre; and so it was stipulated and agreed upon that I should lay in my black silk breeches all night.

Third. It was insisted upon, and stipulated for, by the lady, that after Monsieur was got to bed, and the candle and fire extinguished, Monsieur should not speak one single word the whole night.