I reached Padua in safety, and the postillion, who very likely out of fear had driven me in good style, was well pleased with my liberality; it was the best way of making peace with the tribe.  My arrival caused great joy to my three friends, whom my sudden departure had alarmed, with the exception of M. de Bragadin, in whose hands I had placed my cash-box the day before.  His two friends had given credence to the general report, stating that the podesta had ordered me to leave Padua.  They forgot that I was a citizen of Venice, and that the podesta could not pass such a sentence upon me without exposing himself to legal proceedings.  I was tired, but instead of going to bed I dressed myself in my best attire in order to go to the opera without a mask.  I told my friends that it was necessary for me to shew myself, so as to give the lie to all that had been reported about me by slandering tongues.  De la Haye said to me,

“I shall be delighted if all those reports are false; but you have no one to blame but yourself, for your hurried departure gave sufficient cause for all sorts of surmises.”

“And for slander.”

“That may be; but people want to know everything, and they invent when they cannot guess the truth.”

“And evil-minded fools lose no time in repeating those inventions everywhere.”

“But there can be no doubt that you wanted to kill the postillion.  Is that a calumny likewise?”

“The greatest of all.  Do you think that a good shot can miss a man when he is firing in his very face, unless he does it purposely?”

“It seems difficult; but at all events it is certain that the horse is dead, and you must pay for it.”

“No, sir, not even if the horse belonged to you, for the postillion preceded me.  You know a great many things; do you happen to know the posting regulations?  Besides, I was in a great hurry because I had promised a pretty woman to breakfast with her, and such engagements, as you are well aware, cannot be broken.”

Master de la Haye looked angry at the rather caustic irony with which I had sprinkled the dialogue; but he was still more vexed when, taking some gold out of my pocket, I returned to him the sum he had lent me in Vienna.  A man never argues well except when his purse is well filled; then his spirits are pitched in a high key, unless he should happen to be stupefied by some passion raging in his soul.

M. de Bragadin thought I was quite right to shew myself at the opera without a mask.

The moment I made my appearance in the pit everybody seemed quite astonished, and I was overwhelmed with compliments, sincere or not.  After the first ballet I went to the card-room, and in four deals I won five hundred sequins.  Starving, and almost dead for want of sleep, I returned to my friends to boast of my victory.  My friend Bavois was there, and he seized the opportunity to borrow from me fifty sequins, which he never returned; true, I never asked him for them.