d."

"No doubt of it, for then you will save both your honour and your purse.
But, as you are fond of games of chance, I advise you never to punt. Make
the bank, and the advantage must be on your side."

"Yes, but only a slight advantage."

"As slight as you please, but it will be on your side, and when the game
is over you will find yourself a winner and not a loser. The punter is
excited, the banker is calm. The last says, 'I bet you do not guess,'
while the first says, 'I bet I can guess.' Which is the fool, and which
is the wise man? The question is easily answered. I adjure you to be
prudent, but if you should punt and win, recollect that you are only an
idiot if at the end you lose."

"Why an idiot? Fortune is very fickle."

"It must necessarily be so; it is a natural consequence. Leave off
playing, believe me, the very moment you see luck turning, even if you
should, at that moment, win but one groat."

I had read Plato, and I was astonished at finding a man who could reason
like Socrates.

The next day, Zawoiski called on me very early to tell me that I had been
expected to supper, and that Count Rinaldi had praised my promptness in
paying my debts of honour. I did not think it necessary to undeceive him,
but I did not go again to Count Rinaldi's, whom I saw sixteen years
afterwards in Milan. As to Zawoiski, I did not tell him the story till I
met him in Carlsbad, old and deaf, forty years later.

Three or four months later, M. de Bragadin taught me another of his
masterly lessons. I had become acquainted, through Zawoiski, with a
Frenchman called L'Abbadie, who was then soliciting from the Venetian
Government the appointment of inspector of the armies of the Republic.
The senate appointed, and I presented him to my protector, who promised
him his vote; but the circumstance I am going to relate prevented him
from fulfilling his promise.

I was in need of one hundred sequins to discharge a few debts, and I
begged M. de Bragadin to give them to me.

"Why, my dear son, do you not ask M. de l'Abbadie to render you that
service?"

"I should not dare to do so, dear father."

"Try him; I am certain that he will be glad to lend you that sum."

"I doubt it, but I will try."

I called upon L'Abbadie on the following day, and after a short exchange
of compliments I told him the service I expected from his friendship. He
excused himself in a very polite manner, drowning his refusal in that sea
of commonpla