exchange. He may put me in prison
any day, and I am always expecting him to do so."

"Is the bill for a large sum?"

"Five hundred roubles."

"That is only two thousand francs."

"Yes, but unfortunately I have not got it."

"You ought to annul the debt by paying small sums on account."

"The rascal won't let me."

"Then what do you propose doing?"

"Win a heavy sum, if I can, and escape into Poland.

"The Baron de St. Heleine will run away, too if he can, for he only lives
on credit. The prince is very useful to us, as we are able to play at his
house; but if we get into difficulty he could not extricate us, as he is
heavily in debt himself. He always loses at play. His mistress is
expensive, and gives him a great deal of trouble by her ill-humour."

"Why is she so sour?"

"She wants him to keep his word, for he promised to get her married at
the end of two years; and on the strength of this promise she let him
give her two children. The two years have passed by and the children are
there, and she will no longer allow him to have anything to do with her
for fear of having a third child."

"Can't the prince find her a husband?"

"He did find her a lieutenant, but she won't hear of anybody under the
rank of major."

The prince gave a state dinner to General Woyakoff (for whom I had a
letter), Baroness Korf, Madame Ittinoff, and to a young lady who was
going to marry Baron Budberg, whom I had known at Florence, Turin, and
Augsburg, and whom I may possibly have forgotten to mention.

All these friends made me spend three weeks very pleasantly, and I was
especially pleased with old General Woyakoff. This worthy man had been at
Venice fifty years before, when the Russians were still called
Muscovites, and the founder of St. Petersburg was still alive. He had
grown old like an oak, without changing his horizons. He thought the
world was just the same as it had been when he was young, and was
eloquent in his praise of the Venetian Government, imagining it to be
still the same as he had left it.

At Riga an English merchant named Collins told me that the so-called
Baron de Stenau, who had given me the forged bill of exchange, had been
hanged in Portugal. This "baron" was a poor clerk, and the son of a small
tradesman, and had left his desk in search of adventure, and thus he had
ended. May God have mercy upon his soul!

One evening a Russian, on his way from Poland, where he had been
executing some commiss