Madam, I prefer now to make my confession. I am not the hero of a
romance of the Harem. I am a good young man, an advocate of morality and
propriety, notwithstanding the fact that you have often honoured me with
the title of "a regular original." Be so good as to believe, then, that
the most I have been guilty of is a too artless simplicity of character.
I did not suppose that Louis would show you this eccentric letter, for I
had expressly enjoined him to keep it from you. My only crime therefore
in all this matter has been that I forgot that a woman of your
intelligence would read everything, when she had the mind to do so, and
a husband like yours.

In fact, madam, I hardly know why I have taken the trouble to excuse
myself with so much deliberation. I perceive that by such apologies I
run the risk of aggravating my mistake. What did I write, after all, but
a very commonplace specimen of those Arabian stories which girls such
as you have read continually in the winter evenings, under the eyes of
their delighted mothers? When I consider it, I begin to understand that
your laughter, if you did laugh, must have been at the feebleness of my
imagination--you compared it with the Palace of gold and the thousand
wives of the Caliph Haroun-al-Raschid.--But please remember, once more,
that I am a poor Provençal and not a Sultan.