“I like to let you believe what pleases you.”

“Then you will allow me to believe that you do not hate me.”

“Hate you?  What an ugly word!  If I hated you, should I see you at all?  But let’s talk of something else.  I want you to do me a favour.  Here are two sequins; I want you to put them on an ‘ambe’ in the lottery.  You can bring me the ticket when you call again, or still better, you can send it me, but don’t tell anybody.”

“You shall have the ticket without fail, but why should I not bring it?”

“Because, perhaps, you are tired of coming to see me.”

“Do I look like that?  If so I am very unfortunate.  But what numbers will you have?”

“Three and forty; you gave them me yourself.”

“How did I give them you?”

“You put your hand three times on the board, and took up forty sequins each time.  I am superstitious, and you will laugh at me, I daresay, but it seems to me that you must have come to Milan to make me happy.”

“Now you make me happy indeed.  You say you are superstitious, but if these numbers don’t win you mustn’t draw the conclusion that I don’t love you; that would be a dreadful fallacy.”

“I am not superstitious as all that, nor so vile a logician.”

“Do you believe I love you?”

“Yes.”

“May I tell you so a hundred times?”

“Yes.”

“And prove it in every way?”

“I must enquire into your methods before I consent to that, for it is possible that what you would call a very efficacious method might strike me as quite useless.”

“I see you are going to make me sigh after you for a long time.”

“As long as I can.”

“And when you have no strength left?”

“I will surrender.  Does that satisfy you?”

“Certainly, but I shall exert all my strength to abate yours.”

“Do so; I shall like it.”

“And will you help me to succeed?”

“Perhaps.”

“Ah, dear marchioness; you need only speak to make a man happy.  You have made me really so, and I am leaving you full of ardour.”

On leaving this charming conversationalist I went to the theatre and then to the faro-table, where I saw the masquer who had won three hundred sequins the evening before.  This night he was very unlucky.  He had lost two thousand sequins, and in the course of the next hour his losses had doubled.  Canano threw down his cards and rose, saying, “That will do.”  The masquer left the table.  He was a Genoese named Spinola.

“The bank is prosperous,” I remarked to Canano.

“Yes,” he replied, “but it is not always so.  Pierrot was very lucky the other night.”

“You did not recognize me in the least?”

“No, I was so firmly persuaded that the beggar was you.  You know who he is?”

“I haven’t an idea.  I never saw him before that day.”  In this last particular I did not lie.