What do you want with money? You have a good table, a good lodging,
clothes, linen, attendance, and so forth. And if you want pocket-money,
why don't you ask your brethren the monks?"

"Ask monks for money? They take it, but they don't give it."

"Ask your friends, then."

"I have no friends."

"You are to be pitied, but the reason probably is that you have never
been a friend to anyone. You ought to say masses, that is a good way of
getting money."

"I am unknown."

"You must wait, then, till you are known, and then you can make up for
lost time."

"Your suggestions are idle; you will surely give me a few sequins."

"I can't spare any."

"Wait for the dean. He will be back to-morrow. You can talk to him and
persuade him to lend me some money. You can tell him that I will pay it
back."

"I cannot wait, for I am setting out on my journey directly, and were he
here this moment I should not have the face to tell him to lend you money
after all his generous treatment of you, and when he or anyone can see
that you have all you need."

After this sharp dialogue I left him, and travelling post I set out,
displeased with myself for having given such advantages to a man wholly
unworthy of them. In the March following I had a letter from the good
Dean Bassi, in which he told me how Balbi had run away, taking with him
one of his servant girls, a sum of money, a gold watch, and a dozen
silver spoons and forks. He did not know where he was gone.

Towards the end of the same year I learnt at Paris that the wretched man
had taken refuge at Coire, the capital of the Grisons, where he asked to
be made a member of the Calvinistic Church, and to be recognized as
lawful husband of the woman with him; but in a short time the community
discovered that the new convert was no good, and expelled him from the
bosom of the Church of Calvin. Our ne'er-do-well having no more money,
his wife left him, and he, not knowing what to do next, took the
desperate step of going to Bressa, a town within the Venetian territory,
where he sought the governor, telling him his name, the story of his
flight, and his repentance, begging the governor to take him under his
protection and to obtain his pardon.

The first effect of the podesta's protection was that the penitent was
imprisoned, and he then wrote to the Tribunal to know what to do with
him. The Tribunal told him to send Father Balbi in chains to Venice, and
on his arrival Messer-Grande g