“I do not wish to be paid in advance—­on my return you can give me what you think fit.  I shall want three or four days before setting out, as I must procure some letters of introduction.”

“Very good.  Try to come back before the end of the month.  I have no further instructions to give you.”

On the same day I had some conversation at the Palais Bourbon with my patron, who could not admire sufficiently my delicacy in refusing payment in advance; and taking advantage of my having done so he made me accept a packet of a hundred Louis.  This was the last occasion on which I made use of his purse; I did not borrow from him at Rome fourteen years afterwards.

“As you are on a secret mission, my dear Casanova, I cannot give you a passport.  I am sorry for it, but if I did so your object would be suspected.  However, you will easily be able to get one from the first gentleman of the chamber, on some pretext or other.  Silvia will be more useful to you in that way than anybody else.  You quite understand how discreet your behaviour must be.  Above all, do not get into any trouble; for I suppose you know that, if anything happened to you, it would be of no use to talk of your mission.  We should be obliged to know nothing about you, for ambassadors are the only avowed spies.  Remember that you must be even more careful and reserved than they, and yet, if you wish to succeed, all this must be concealed, and you must have an air of freedom from constraint that you may inspire confidence.  If, on your return, you like to shew me your report before handing it in, I will tell you what may require to be left out or added.”

Full of this affair, the importance of which I exaggerated in proportion to my inexperience, I told Silvia that I wanted to accompany some English friends as far as Calais, and that she would oblige me by getting me a passport from the Duc de Gesvres.  Always ready to oblige me, she sat down directly and wrote the duke a letter, telling me to deliver it myself since my personal description was necessary.  These passports carry legal weight in the Isle de France only, but they procure one respect in all the northern parts of the kingdom.

Fortified with Silvia’s letter, and accompanied by her husband, I went to the duke who was at his estate at St. Toro, and he had scarcely read the letter through before he gave me the passport.  Satisfied on this point I went to Villette, and asked Madame if she had anything I could take to her niece.  “You can take her the box of china statuettes,” said she, “if M. Corneman has not sent them already.”  I called on the banker who gave me the box, and in return for a hundred Louis a letter of credit on a Dunkirk house.  I begged him to name me in the letter in a special manner, as I was going for the sake of pleasure.  He seemed glad to oblige me, and I started the same evening, and three days later I was at the “Hotel de la Conciergerie,” in Dunkirk.