taking the bit in
my teeth, embraced the wretched profession of a violinist. I horrified my
friends, but this did not last for very long.

"At the age of twenty-one years, one of the highest nobles of Venice
adopted me as his son, and, having become rich, I went to see Italy,
France, Germany and Vienna where I knew Count Roggendorff. I returned to
Venice, where, two years later, the State Inquisitors of Venice, for just
and wise reasons, imprisoned me under The Leads.

"This was the state prison, from which no one had ever escaped, but, with
the aid of God, I took flight at the end of fifteen months and went to
Paris. In two years, my affairs prospered so well that I became worth a
million, but, all the same, I went bankrupt. I made money in Holland;
suffered misfortune in Stuttgart; was received with honors in
Switzerland; visited M. de Voltaire; adventured in Genoa, Marseilles,
Florence and in Rome where the Pope Rezzonico, a Venetian, made me a
Chevalier of Saint-Jean-Latran and an apostolic protonotary. This was in
the year 1760.

"In the same year I found good fortune at Naples; at Florence I carried
off a girl; and, the following year, I was to attend the Congress at
Augsburg, charged with a commission from the King of Portugal. The
Congress did not meet there and, after the publication of peace, I passed
on into England, which great misfortunes caused me to leave in the
following year, 1764. I avoided the gibbet which, however, should not
have dishonored me as I should only have been hung. In the same year I
searched in vain for fortune at Berlin and at Petersburg, but I found it
at Warsaw in the following year. Nine months afterwards, I lost it
through being embroiled in a pistol duel with General Branicki; I pierced
his abdomen but in eight months he was well again and I was very much
pleased. He was a brave man. Obliged to leave Poland, I returned to Paris
in 1767, but a 'lettre de cachet' obliged me to leave and I went to Spain
where I met with great misfortunes. I committed the crime of making
nocturnal visits to the mistress of the 'vice-roi', who was a great
scoundrel.

"At the frontiers of Spain, I escaped from assassins only to suffer, at
Aix, in Provence, an illness which took me to the edge of the grave,
after spitting blood for eighteen months.

"In the year 1769, I published my Defense of the Government of Venice, in
three large volumes, written against Amelot de la Houssaie.

"In the followi