“You had good taste, for she’s a pretty woman.”

“She is generally thought so, and it was a love match on my side.”

He ended by asking me to come and see him in his room the next day, after dinner, telling me that I should find good company and a bank at faro, which he kept himself.  He added, without ceremony, that if I liked we could go half shares, and that I should find it profitable.  I thanked him, and promised to pay him a visit.

I went abroad at an early hour next morning, and after having spent some time with the Jew, Boaz, and having given a polite refusal to his offer of a bed, I went to pay my respects to M. d’Afri, who since the death of the Princess of Orange, the Regent of the Low Countries, was generally known as His Most Christian Majesty’s ambassador.  He gave me an excellent reception, but he said that if I had returned to Holland hoping to do business on behalf of the Government I should waste my time, since the action of the comptroller-general had lowered the credit of the nation, which was thought to be on the verge of bankruptcy.

“This M. Silhouette,” said he, “has served the king very badly.  It is all very well to say that payments are only suspended for a year, but it is not believed.”

He then asked me if I knew a certain Comte de St. Germain, who had lately arrived at the Hague.

“He has not called on me,” said the ambassador, “though he says he is commissioned by the king to negotiate a loan of a hundred millions.  When I am asked about him, I am obliged to say that I know nothing about him, for fear of compromising myself.  Such a reply, as you can understand, is not likely to increase his chance of success, but that is his fault and not mine.  Why has he not brought me a letter from the Duc de Choiseul or the Marquise de Pompadour?  I take him to be an impostor, but I shall know something more about him in the course of ten days.”

I told him, in my turn, all I knew of this truly eccentric individual.  He was not a little surprised to hear that the king had given him an apartment at Chambord, but when I told him that the count professed to be able to make diamonds he laughed and said that in that case he would no doubt make the hundred millions.  Just as I was leaving, M. d’Afri asked me to dine with him on the following day.

On returning to the hotel I called on the Comte de St. Germain.

“You have anticipated me,” said he, on seeing me enter, “I intended to have called on you.  I suppose, my dear Casanova, that you have come to try what you can do for our Court, but you will find your task a difficult one, as the Exchange is highly offended at the late doings of that fool Silhouette.  All the same I hope I shall be able to get my hundred millions.  I have passed my word to my friend, Louis XV. (I may call him so), and I can’t disappoint him; the business will be done in the next three or four weeks.”