We took leave of our worthy hostess, who, entertaining no hope of seeing us again, expressed her sorrow and overwhelmed us with blessings.  I escorted my darling, without any accident, as far as the door of her house, and went home.

I had just risen at noon, when to my great surprise I had a visit from De la Haye with his pupil Calvi, a handsome young man, but the very copy of his master in everything.  He walked, spoke, laughed exactly like him; it was the same language as that of the Jesuits correct but rather harsh French.  I thought that excess of imitation perfectly scandalous, and I could not help telling De la Haye that he ought to change his pupil’s deportment, because such servile mimicry would only expose him to bitter raillery.  As I was giving him my opinion on that subject, Bavois made his appearance, and when he had spent an hour in the company of the young man he was entirely of the same mind.  Calvi died two or three years later.  De la Haye, who was bent upon forming pupils, became, two or three months after Calvi’s death, the tutor of the young Chevalier de Morosini, the nephew of the nobleman to whom Bavois was indebted for his rapid fortune, who was then the Commissioner of the Republic to settle its boundaries with the Austrian Government represented by Count Christiani.

I was in love beyond all measure, and I would not postpone an application on which my happiness depended any longer.  After dinner, and as soon as everybody had retired, I begged M. de Bragadin and his two friends to grant me an audience of two hours in the room in which we were always inaccessible.  There, without any preamble, I told them that I was in love with C——­ C——­, and determined on carrying her off if they could not contrive to obtain her from her father for my wife.  “The question at issue,” I said to M. de Bragadin, “is how to give me a respectable position, and to guarantee a dowry of ten thousand ducats which the young lady would bring me.”  They answered that, if Paralis gave them the necessary instructions, they were ready to fulfil them.  That was all I wanted.  I spent two hours in forming all the pyramids they wished, and the result was that M. de Bragadin himself would demand in my name the hand of the young lady; the oracle explaining the reason of that choice by stating that it must be the same person who would guarantee the dowry with his own fortune.  The father of my mistress being then at his country-house, I told my friends that they would have due notice of his return, and that they were to be all three together when M. de Bragadin demanded the young lady’s hand.

Well pleased with what I had done, I called on P——­ C——­ the next morning.  An old woman, who opened the door for me, told me that he was not at home, but that his mother would see me.  She came immediately with her daughter, and they both looked very sad, which at once struck me as a bad sign.  C——­ C——­ told me that her brother was in prison for debt, and