me.  When I reached my pretty house at Augsburg I took to my bed, determined not to rise till I was cured or dead.  M. Carli, my banker, recommended to me a doctor named Cephalides, a pupil of the famous Fayet, who had cured me of a similar complaint several years before.  This Cephalides was considered the best doctor in Augsburg.  He examined me and declared he could cure me by sudorifics without having recourse to the knife.  He began his treatment by putting me on a severe regimen, ordering baths, and applying mercury locally.  I endured this treatment for six weeks, at the end of which time I found myself worse than at the beginning.  I had become terribly thin, and I had two enormous inguinal tumours.  I had to make up my mind to have them lanced, but though the operation nearly killed me it did not to make me any better.  He was so clumsy as to cut the artery, causing great loss of blood which was arrested with difficulty, and would have proved fatal if it had not been for the care of M. Algardi, a Bolognese doctor in the service of the Prince-Bishop of Augsburg.

I had enough of Cephalides, and Dr. Algardi prepared in my presence eighty-six pills containing eighteen grains of manna.  I took one of these pills every morning, drinking a large glass of curds after it, and in the evening I had another pill with barley water, and this was the only sustenance I had.  This heroic treatment gave me back my health in two months and a half, in which I suffered a great deal of pain; but I did not begin to put on flesh and get back my strength till the end of the year.

It was during this time that I heard about Costa’s flight with my diamonds, watches, snuff-box, linen, rich suits, and a hundred louis which Madame d’Urfe had given him for the journey.  The worthy lady sent me a bill of exchange for fifty thousand francs, which she had happily not entrusted to the robber, and the money rescued me very opportunely from the state to which my imprudence had reduced me.

At this period I made another discovery of an extremely vexatious character; namely, that Le Duc had robbed me.  I would have forgiven him if he had not forced me to a public exposure, which I could only have avoided with the loss of my honour.  However, I kept him in my service till my return to Paris at the commencement of the following year.

Towards the end of September, when everybody knew that the Congress would not take place, the Renaud passed through Augsburg with Desarrnoises on her way to Paris; but she dared not come and see me for fear I should make her return my goods, of which she had taken possession without telling me.  Four or five years later she married a man named Bohmer, the same that gave the Cardinal de Rohan the famous necklace, which he supposed was destined for the unfortunate Marie Antoinette.  The Renaud was at Paris when I returned, but I made no endeavour to see her, as I wished, if possible, to forget the past.  I had every reason to do so, for amongst all the misfortunes I had gone through during that wretched year the person I found most at fault was myself.  Nevertheless, I would have given myself the pleasure of cutting off Desarmoises’s ears; but the old rascal, who, no doubt, foresaw what kind of treatment I was likely to mete to him, made his escape.  Shortly after, he died miserably of consumption in Normandy.