CHAPTER XIV

Bottarelli—­A Letter from Pauline—­The Avenging Parrot—­Pocchini—­Guerra, the Venetian—­I Meet Sara Again; My Idea of Marrying Her and Settling in Switzerland—­The Hanoverians

Thus ended the first act of the comedy; the second began the next morning.  I was just getting up, when I heard a noise at the street door, and on putting my head out of the window I saw Pocchini, the scoundrel who had robbed me at Stuttgart trying to get into my house.  I cried out wrathfully that I would have nothing to do with him, and slammed down my window.

A little later Goudar put in an appearance.  He had got a copy of the St. James’s Chronicle, containing a brief report of my arrest, and of my being set a liberty under a bail of eighty guineas.  My name and the lady’s were disguised, but Rostaing and Bottarelli were set down plainly, and the editor praised their conduct.  I felt as if I should like to know Bottarelli, and begged Goudar to take me to him, and Martinelli, happening to call just then, said he would come with us.

We entered a wretched room on the third floor of a wretched house, and there we beheld a picture of the greatest misery.  A woman and five children clothed in rags formed the foreground, and in the background was Bottarelli, in an old dressing-gown, writing at a table worthy of Philemon and Baucis.  He rose as we came in, and the sight of him moved me to compassion.  I said,—­

“Do you know me, sir?”

“No, sir, I do not.”

“I am Casanova, against whom you bore false witness; whom you tried to cast into Newgate.”

“I am very sorry, but look around you and say what choice have I?  I have no bread to give my children.  I will do as much in your favour another time for nothing.”

“Are you not afraid of the gallows?”

“No, for perjury is not punished with death; besides it is very difficult to prove.”

“I have heard you are a poet.”

“Yes.  I have lengthened the Didone and abridged the Demetrio.”

“You are a great poet, indeed!”

I felt more contempt than hatred for the rascal, and gave his wife a guinea, for which she presented me with a wretched pamphlet by her husband:  “The Secrets of the Freemasons Displayed.”  Bottarelli had been a monk in his native city, Pisa, and had fled to England with his wife, who had been a nun.

About this time M. de Saa surprised me by giving me a letter from my fair Portuguese, which confirmed the sad fate of poor Clairmont.  Pauline said she was married to Count Al——.  I was astonished to hear M. de Saa observe that he had known all about Pauline from the moment she arrived in London.  That is the hobby of all diplomatists; they like people to believe that they are omniscient.  However, M. de Saa was a man of worth and talent, and one could excuse this weakness as an incident inseparable from his profession; while most diplomatists only make themselves ridiculous by their assumption of universal knowledge.