oung Milanese whom I had known in Reggio, a
confirmed gambler, and a downright clever hand in securing the favours of
Dame Fortune, called on me a few minutes after De la Haye had retired. He
told me that, having seen me lose all my money the night before, he had
come to offer me the means of retrieving my losses, if I would take an
equal interest with him in a faro bank that he meant to hold at his
house, and in which he would have as punters seven or eight rich
foreigners who were courting his wife.

"If you will put three hundred sequins in my bank," he added, "you shall
be my partner. I have three hundred sequins myself, but that is not
enough because the punters play high. Come and dine at my house, and you
will make their acquaintance. We can play next Friday as there will be no
opera, and you may rely upon our winning plenty of gold, for a certain
Gilenspetz, a Swede, may lose twenty thousand sequins."

I was without any resources, or at all events I could expect no
assistance except from M. de Bragadin upon whom I felt ashamed of
encroaching. I was well aware that the proposal made by Croce was not
strictly moral, and that I might have chosen a more honourable society;
but if I had refused, the purse of Madame Croce's admirers would not have
been more mercifully treated; another would have profited by that stroke
of good fortune. I was therefore not rigid enough to refuse my assistance
as adjutant and my share of the pie; I accepted Croce's invitation.

CHAPTER XIV

I Get Rich Again--My Adventure At Dolo--Analysis of a Long
Letter From C. C.--Mischievous Trick Played Upon Me By P.
C.--At Vincenza--A Tragi-comedy At the Inn

Necessity, that imperious law and my only excuse, having made me almost
the partner of a cheat, there was still the difficulty of finding the
three hundred sequins required; but I postponed the task of finding them
until after I should have made the acquaintance of the dupes of the
goddess to whom they addressed their worship. Croce took me to the Prato
delta Valle, where we found madame surrounded with foreigners. She was
pretty; and as a secretary of the imperial ambassador, Count Rosemberg,
had attached himself to her, not one of the Venetian nobles dared court
her. Those who interested me among the satellites gravitating around that
star were the Swede Gilenspetz, a Hamburger, the Englishman Mendez, who
has already been mentioned, and three or four others to whore