out after her with all her might, "Good-bye, disguised beauty!" These few words distressed our Amazon very much. "What a fatality," said she, "that I also should be recognised! What happened to my sister has occurred to me. I am not more fortunate than she was; and it would be ridiculous for me to join the army with so effeminate an appearance that everybody will know what I am!" She immediately returned to her father's house, much vexed at having made so unsuccessful a journey.
Her father received her affectionately, and praised her for having had the prudence to return; but that did not prevent the renewal of his grief, with the additional reason, that he had already been put to the expense of two useless suits of clothes, and several other things. The good old man, however, kept his sorrow to himself, that he might not add to that of his daughters.
At last the youngest girl begged him in the most urgent manner to grant her the same favour he had to her sisters. "Perhaps," said she, "it is presumption in me to hope I shall succeed better than they have; but notwithstanding I should like to try. I am taller than they are; you know that I go every day hunting; this exercise qualifies one in some degree for war; and the great desire I feel to relieve you in your distress inspires me with extraordinary courage." The Count loved her much better than he did either of her sisters; she was so attentive to him that he looked upon her as his chief consolation. She read interesting stories to amuse him, nursed him in his illness, and all the game she killed was for him; so that he did all he could to change her determination, and much more so than he had done with her sisters. "Would you leave me, my dear child?" said he. "Your absence will be the death of me: if fortune should really favour you, and you should return covered with laurels, I shall not have the pleasure of witnessing them; my advanced age, and your absence, will terminate my existence." "No, my dear father," said Belle-belle, (it was thus she was named:) "do not think I shall be long away: the war will soon be over; and if I find any other means of fulfilling the King's orders, I shall not neglect them, for I venture to assert, if my absence distress you, it will be still more distressing to me." He at last consented to her request. She made herself
