I felt ardently disposed, and I thought she was pleased with the restraint I put upon myself.

“Will you be annoyed,” said I, “if I call upon you frequently?”

“If you don’t mind I will call myself your niece, or your cousin, and then we can see each other.”

“Do you know that that may possibly be true?  I would not swear that you were not my sister.”

This sally made us talk of the friendship that had subsisted between her father and my mother, and we allowed ourselves those caresses which are permitted to near relations; but feeling that things were going too far we ceased.  As she bade me farewell, she asked me to dine with her the next day, and I accepted.

As I went back to my inn I reflected on the strange combinations which made my life one continuous chain of events, and I felt it my duty to give thanks to eternal Providence, for I felt that I had been born under a happy star.

The next day, when I went to dine with Madame Denis, I found a numerous company assembled.  The first person who greeted me with the warmth of an old friend was a young dancer named Aubri, whom I had known at Paris and at Venice.  He was famous for having been the lover of one of the most exalted Venetian ladies, and at the same time her husband’s pathic.  It was said that this scandalous intimacy was of such a nature that Aubri used to sleep between the husband and wife.  At the beginning of Lent the State Inquisitors sent him to Trieste.  He introduced me to his wife, who danced like himself and was called La Panting.  He had married her at St. Petersburg, from which city he had just come, and they were going to spend the winter in Paris.  The next person who advanced to greet me was a fat man, who held out his hand and said we had been friends twenty-five years ago, but that we were so young then that it would be no wonder if we did not know each other.  “We knew each other at Padua, at Dr. Gozzi’s,” he added; “my name is Joseph da Loglio.”

“I remember you,” I replied, “in those days you were violoncello at the Russian chapel.”

“Exactly; and now I am returning to my native land to leave it no more.  I have the honour to introduce you to my wife, who was born at St. Petersburg, but is a daughter of Modonis the violinist, whose reputation is European.  In a week I shall be at Dresden, where I hope to have the honour of seeing Madame Casanova, your mother.”

I was delighted to find myself in such congenial society, but I could see that Madame Denis did not relish these recollections extending over a quarter of a century, and I turned the conversation to the events at St. Petersburg which had resulted in Catherine the Great ascending the throne.  Da Loglio told us that he had taken a small part in this conspiracy, and had thought it prudent to get out of the way.  “Fortunately,” he added, “this was a contingency I had long provided against, and I am in a position to spend the rest of my days in comfort in Italy.”