appearance in the pit everybody seemed quite
astonished, and I was overwhelmed with compliments, sincere or not. After
the first ballet I went to the card-room, and in four deals I won five
hundred sequins. Starving, and almost dead for want of sleep, I returned
to my friends to boast of my victory. My friend Bavois was there, and he
seized the opportunity to borrow from me fifty sequins, which he never
returned; true, I never asked him for them.

My thoughts being constantly absorbed in my dear C---- C----, I spent the
whole of the next day in having my likeness painted in miniature by a
skilful Piedmontese, who had come for the Fair of Padua, and who in after
times made a great deal of money in Venice. When he had completed my
portrait he painted for me a beautiful St. Catherine of the same size,
and a clever Venetian jeweller made the ring, the bezel of which shewed
only the sainted virgin; but a blue spot, hardly visible on the white
enamel which surrounded it, corresponded with the secret spring which
brought out my portrait, and the change was obtained by pressing on the
blue spot with the point of a pin.

On the following Friday, as we were rising from the dinner-table, a
letter was handed to me. It was with great surprise that I recognized the
writing of P---- C----. He asked me to pay him a visit at the "Star
Hotel," where he would give me some interesting information. Thinking
that he might have something to say concerning his sister, I went to him
at once.

I found him with Madame C----, and after congratulating him upon his
release from prison I asked him for the news he had to communicate.

"I am certain," he said, "that my sister is in a convent, and I shall be
able to tell you the name of it when I return to Venice."

"You will oblige me," I answered, pretending not to know anything.

But his news had only been a pretext to make me come to him, and his
eagerness to communicate it had a very different object in view than the
gratification of my curiosity.

"I have sold," he said to me, "my privileged contract for three years for
a sum of fifteen thousand florins, and the man with whom I have made the
bargain took me out of prison by giving security for me, and advanced me
six thousand florins in four letters of exchange."

He shewed me the letters of exchange, endorsed by a name which I did not
know, but which he said was a very good one, and he continued,

"I intend to buy six thousand florins w