I felt that she was pressing it lightly, and the conversation ended there.

We had reached the top of the hills; it was now quite dark, and we galloped all the rest of the way to the chateau.
As I was coming down from my room for dinner, I met Madame de Malouet in the vestibule.
"Well!" she said, laughingly, "did you conform to the prescription ?" "Rigidly, madam." "You showed yourself subjugated?
"I did, madam." "Excellent! She is satisfied now, and so are you." "Amen!" I said.
The evening passed off without further incident.
I took pleasure in doing for Madame de Palme some trifling services which she was no longer asking.

She left the dance two or three times to come and address me some good-natured jests that passed through her brain, and when I withdrew, she followed me to the door with a smiling and cordial look.
I ask you now, friend Paul, to sift the precise meaning and the moral of this tale.

You may perhaps judge, and I hope you will, that a chimerical imagination can alone magnify into an event this vulgar episode of society life; but if you see in the facts I have just told you the least germ of danger, the slightest element of a serious complication, tell me so; I'll break the engagements that were to detain me here some ten or twelve days longer, and I'll leave at once.
I do not love Madame de Palme; I cannot and will not love her.

My opinion of her has evidently changed greatly; I look upon her henceforth as a good little woman.