Is that to keep down the lusts of the flesh?"

"I wish people would think so; but no one does, I am afraid."

He was glad to hear that I bore a letter to the Venetian ambassador,
which I had not yet presented. He said he would take care to give the
ambassador a prejudice in my favour, and that he would give me a good
reception.

"We will begin to break the ice to-morrow," added this charming cardinal.
"You shall dine with me, and his excellence shall hear of it."

He heard with pleasure that I was well provided for as far as money was
concerned, and that I had made up my mind to live simply and discreetly
so long as I remained in Rome.

"I shall write about you to M---- M----," he said. "I have always kept up
a correspondence with that delightful nun."

I then amused him by the talk of my adventure with the nun of Chamberi.

"You ought to ask the Prince of Santa Croce to introduce you to the
princess. We might pass some pleasant hours with her, though not in our
old Venetian style, for the princess is not at all like M---- M----.

"And yet she serves to amuse your eminence?"

"Well, I have to be content with what I can get."

The next day as I was getting up from dinner the cardinal told me that M.
Zuliani had written about me to the ambassador, who would be delighted to
make my acquaintance, and when I went I had an excellent reception from
him.

The Chevalier Erizzo, who is still alive, was a man of great
intelligence, common sense, and oratorical power. He complimented me on
my travels and on my being protected by the State Inquisitors instead of
being persecuted by them. He kept me to dinner, and asked me to dine with
him whenever I had no other engagement.

The same evening I met Prince Santa Croce at the duchess's, and asked him
to introduce me to his wife.

"I have been expecting that," he replied "even since the cardinal talked
to her about you for more than an hour. You can call any day at eleven in
the morning or two in the afternoon."

I called the next day at two o'clock. She was taking her siesta in bed,
but as I had the privileges allowed to a person of no consequence she let
me in directly. She was young, pretty, lively, curious, and talkative;
she had not enough patience to wait for my answer to her questions. She
struck me as a toy, well adapted to amuse a man of affairs, who felt the
need of some distraction. The cardinal saw her regularly three times a
day; the first thing in the morni