ge. I told him to send to the inn for the rest.

"As soon as I have made him confess the facts you allege against him,"
said the bargello, "we shall be able to do something. I have already
heard that he is at Roland's, and has been trying to get the
Englishwoman's trunk. If you liked to spend a hundred crowns instead of
fifty we could send him to the galleys for a couple of years."

"We will see about that," said I, "for the present we will have him into
prison."

He was delighted to hear that the horse was not l'Etoile's property, and
said that if I liked to call at nine o'clock he would have further news
for me.

I said I would come. I really had a good deal to do at Rome. I wanted to
see Cardinal Bernis in the first place, but I postponed everything to the
affair of the moment.

I went back to the inn and was told by a valet de place, whom Sir
B---- M---- had hired, that the Englishman had gone to bed.

We were in need of a carriage, so I summoned the landlord and was
astonished to find myself confronted by Roland in person.

"How's this?" I said. "I thought you were still at the Place d'Espagne."

"I have given my old house to my daughter who has married a prosperous
Frenchman, while I have taken this palace where there are some
magnificent rooms."

"Has your daughter many foreigners staying at her house now?"

"Only one Frenchman, the Comte de l'Etoile, who is waiting for his
equipage to come on. He has an excellent horse, and I am thinking of
buying it from him."

"I advise you to wait till to-morrow, and to say nothing about the advice
I have given you."

"Why should I wait?"

"I can't say any more just now."

This Roland was the father of the Therese whom I had loved nine years
before, and whom my brother Jean had married in 1762, a year after my
departure. Roland told me that my brother was in Rome with Prince
Beloselski, the Russian ambassador to the Court of Saxony.

"I understood that my brother could not come to Rome."

"He came with a safe-conduct which the Dowager Electress of Saxony
obtained for him from the Holy Father. He wants his case to be re-tried,
and there he makes a mistake, for if it were heard a hundred times the
sentence would continue the same. No one will see him, everyone avoids
him, even Mengs will have nothing to say to him."

"Mengs is here, is he? I though he had been at Madrid."

"He has got leave of absence for a year, but his family remains in
Spain."

After