her tongue is hard to acquire, and the 'dolce far niente'
habit is an obstacle to all assiduous study.

I write down these truths in spite of my patriotism. I know that if any
of my fellow-countrywomen come to read me they will be very angry; but I
shall be beyond the reach of all anger.

To return to our theatricals. As I could not make my actresses get their
parts letter perfect, I became their prompter, and found out by
experience all the ungratefulness of the position.

The actors never acknowledged their debt to the prompter, and put down to
his account all the mistakes they make.

A Spanish doctor is almost as badly off; if his patient recovers, the
cure is set down to the credit of one saint or another; but if he dies,
the physician is blamed for his unskilful treatment.

A handsome negress, who served the prettiest of my actresses to whom I
shewed great attentions, said to me one day,--

"I can't make out how you can be so much in love with my mistress, who is
as white as the devil."

"Have you never loved a white man?" I asked.

"Yes," said she, "but only because I had no negro, to whom I should
certainly have given the preference."

Soon after the negress became mine, and I found out the falsity of the
axiom, 'Sublata lucerna nullum discrimen inter feminas', for even in the
darkness a man would know a black woman from a white one.

I feel quite sure myself that the negroes are a distinct species from
ourselves. There is one essential difference, leaving the colour out of
account--namely, that an African woman can either conceive or not, and
can conceive a boy or a girl. No doubt my readers will disbelieve this
assertion, but their incredulity would cease if I instructed them in the
mysterious science of the negresses.

Count Rosenberg, grand chamberlain of the emperor, came on a visit to
Trieste in company with an Abbe Casti, whose acquaintance I wished to
make on account of some extremely blasphemous poems he had written.
However, I was disappointed; and instead of a man of parts, I found the
abbe to be an impudent worthless fellow, whose only merit was a knack of
versification.

Count Rosenberg took the abbe with him, because he was useful in the
capacities of a fool and a pimp-occupations well suited to his morals,
though by no means agreeable to his ecclesiastical status. In those days
syphilis had not completely destroyed his uvula.

I heard that this shameless profligate, this paltry poeta