Madam, let me be very candid; I have a warm temperament, certainly--more
so, perhaps, than an ordinary Provençal. I will confess to even more
than this, if your grace so wills it, and I will not blush for it; but
pray condescend to believe that I am also a respecter of conventional
proprieties, and that I should feel most keenly the loss of your esteem
in this regard.

Now, from a few words of satirical wit, concealed like
small serpents under the flowery condolences of your malicious letter, I
concluded that this miserable fellow Louis, abandoning all
considerations of delicacy, and at the risk of ruining my reputation,
had played me a most abominable trick, by reading out to you all the
nonsense which I wrote to him last week. You need not deny it! He
confesses it to-day, unblushingly, in the budget of news which he sends
me, adding that you "laughed over it." Good gracious! what can you have
thought of me? After such a story, I certainly could never again look
you in the face, but that I can clear myself by assuring you at once
that all this tale was nothing but a mystification, invented as a return
for some of his impertinent chaff regarding my uncle Barbassou's will.
Louis fell into the trap like any booby. But for him to have drawn you
with him, is enough to make me die of shame.