in great repute at Venice, and was
nick-named Cavamacchia, because her father had been a scourer. This named
vexed her a great deal, she wished to be called Preati, which was her
family name, but it was all in vain, and the only concession her friends
would make was to call her by her Christian name of Juliette. She had
been introduced to fashionable notice by the Marquis de Sanvitali, a
nobleman from Parma, who had given her one hundred thousand ducats for
her favours. Her beauty was then the talk of everybody in Venice, and it
was fashionable to call upon her. To converse with her, and especially to
be admitted into her circle, was considered a great boon.

As I shall have to mention her several times in the course of my history,
my readers will, I trust, allow me to enter into some particulars about
her previous life.

Juliette was only fourteen years of age when her father sent her one day
to the house of a Venetian nobleman, Marco Muazzo, with a coat which he
had cleaned for him. He thought her very beautiful in spite of the dirty
rags in which she was dressed, and he called to see her at her father's
shop, with a friend of his, the celebrated advocate, Bastien Uccelli,
who; struck by the romantic and cheerful nature of Juliette still more
than by her beauty and fine figure, gave her an apartment, made her study
music, and kept her as his mistress. At the time of the fair, Bastien
took her with him to various public places of resort; everywhere she
attracted general attention, and secured the admiration of every lover of
the sex. She made rapid progress in music, and at the end of six months
she felt sufficient confidence in herself to sign an engagement with a
theatrical manager who took her to Vienna to give her a 'castrato' part
in one of Metastasio's operas.

The advocate had previously ceded her to a wealthy Jew who, after giving
her splendid diamonds, left her also.

In Vienna, Juliette appeared on the stage, and her beauty gained for her
an admiration which she would never have conquered by her very inferior
talent. But the constant crowd of adorers who went to worship the
goddess, having sounded her exploits rather too loudly, the august
Maria-Theresa objected to this new creed being sanctioned in her capital,
and the beautiful actress received an order to quit Vienna forthwith.

Count Spada offered her his protection, and brought her back to Venice,
but she soon left for Padua where she had an engagem