I lived calmly and peaceably, and still look back upon those days with pleasure.  I spent my afternoons with the paladin playing tressette an Italian game of which he was very fond, and which I played well enough for the paladin to like to have me as a partner.

In spite of my sobriety and economy I found myself in debt three months after my arrival, and I did not know where to turn for help.  The fifty ducats per month, which were sent me from Venice, were insufficient, for the money I had to spend on my carriage, my lodging, my servant, and my dress brought me down to the lowest ebb, and I did not care to appeal to anyone.  But fortune had a surprise in store for me, and hitherto she had never left me.

Madame Schmit, whom the king for good reasons of his own had accommodated with apartments in the palace, asked me one evening to sup with her, telling me that the king would be of the party.  I accepted the invitation, and I was delighted to find the delightful Bishop Kraswiski, the Abbe Guigiotti, and two or three other amateurs of Italian literature.  The king, whose knowledge of literature was extensive, began to tell anecdotes of classical writers, quoting manuscript authorities which reduced me to silence, and which were possibly invented by him.  Everyone talked except myself, and as I had had no dinner I ate like an ogre, only replying by monosyllables when politeness obliged me to say something.  The conversation turned on Horace, and everyone gave his opinion on the great materialist’s philosophy, and the Abbe Guigiotti obliged me to speak by saying that unless I agreed with him I should not keep silence.

“If you take my silence for consent to your extravagant eulogium of Horace,” I said, “you are mistaken; for in my opinion the ’nec cum venari volet poemata panges’, of which you think so much, is to my mind a satire devoid of delicacy.”

“Satire and delicacy are hard to combine.”

“Not for Horace, who succeeded in pleasing the great Augustus, and rendering him immortal as the protector of learned men.  Indeed other sovereigns seem to vie with him by taking his name and even by disguising it.”

The king (who had taken the name of Augustus himself) looked grave and said,—­

“What sovereigns have adopted a disguised form of the name Augustus?”

“The first king of Sweden, who called himself Gustavus, which is only an anagram of Augustus.”

“That is a very amusing idea, and worth more than all the tales we have told.  Where did you find that?”

“In a manuscript at Wolfenbuttel.”

The king laughed loudly, though he himself had been citing manuscripts.  But he returned to the charge and said,—­

“Can you cite any passage of Horace (not in manuscript) where he shews his talent for delicacy and satire?”

“Sir, I could quote several passages, but here is one which seems to me very good:  ‘Coyam rege’, says the poet, ’sua de paupertate tacentes, plus quan pocentes ferent.”