"

"I sympathise with you. Was the duke an old man?"

"Hardly sixty. You have seen him; he did not look his age."

"Where have I seen him?"

"Did he not bring you to my box?"

"You don't say so! He did not tell me his name and I never saw him
before."

I was grieved to hear of his death; it was in all probability a
misfortune for me as well as Madame Pichona. All the duke's estate passed
to a son of miserly disposition, who in his turn had a son who was
beginning to evince the utmost extravagance.

I was told that the family of Medina-Celi enjoys thirty titles of
nobility.

One day a young man called on me to offer me, as a foreigner, his
services in a country which he knew thoroughly.

"I am Count Marazzini de Plaisance," he began, "I am not rich and I have
come to Madrid to try and make my fortune. I hope to enter the bodyguard
of his Catholic majesty. I have been indulging in the amusements of the
town ever since I came. I saw you at the ball with an unknown beauty. I
don't ask you to tell me her name, but if you are fond of novelty I can
introduce you to all the handsomest girls in Madrid."

If my experience had taught me such wholesome lessons as I might have
expected, I should have shown the impudent rascal the door. Alas! I began
to be weary of my experience and the fruits of it; I began to feel the
horrors of a great void; I had need of some slight passion to wile away
the dreary hours. I therefore made this Mercury welcome, and told him I
should be obliged by his presenting me to some beauties, neither too easy
nor too difficult to access.

"Come with me to the ball," he rejoined, "and I will shew you some women
worthy of your attention."

The ball was to take place the same evening, and I agreed; he asked me to
give him some dinner, and I agreed to that also. After dinner he told me
he had no money, and I was foolish enough to give him a doubloon. The
fellow, who was ugly, blind of one eye, and full of impudence, shewed me
a score of pretty women, whose histories he told me, and seeing me to be
interested in one of them he promised to bring her to a procuress. He
kept his word, but he cost me dear; for the girl only served for an
evening's amusement.

Towards the end of the carnival the noble Don Diego, the father of Donna
Ignazia, brought me my boots, and the thanks of his wife and himself for
the pleasure I had given her at the ball.

"She is as good as she is beautiful," said I, "she deser