It was a festival time for the sentinels, as I shared my meals and my good wine with them; and consequently these poor fellows were firmly attached to me.

I was curious to know who was paying for my good cheer, but there was no chance of my finding out, for the waiter from the inn was never allowed to approach my cell.

In this dungeon, where I was imprisoned for forty-two days, I wrote in pencil and without other reference than my memory, my refutation of Amelot de la Houssaye’s “History of the Venetian Government.”

I was most heartily amused during my imprisonment, and in the following manner: 

While I was at Warsaw an Italian named Tadini came to Warsaw.  He had an introduction to Tomatis who commended him to me.  He called himself an oculist.  Tomatis used to give him a dinner now and again, but not being well off in those days I could only give him good words and a cup of coffee when he chanced to come about my breakfast-time.

Tadini talked to everybody about the operations he had performed, and condemned an oculist who had been at Warsaw for twenty years, saying that he did not understand how to extract a cataract, while the other oculist said that Tadini was a charlatan who did not know how the eye was made.

Tadini begged me to speak in his favour to a lady who had had a cataract removed by the Warsaw oculist, only to return again a short time after the operation.

The lady was blind of the one eye, but she could see with the other, and I told Tadini that I did not care to meddle with such a delicate matter.

“I have spoken to the lady,” said Tadini, “and I have mentioned your name as a person who will answer for me.”

“You have done wrong; in such a matter I would not stand surety for the most learned of men, and I know nothing about your learning.”

“But you know I am an oculist.”

“I know you were introduced to me as such, but that’s all.  As a professional man, you should not need anyone’s commendation, you should be able to say, ‘Operibus credite’.  That should be your motto.”

Tadini was vexed with my incredulity, and shewed me a number of testimonials, which I might possibly have read, if the first which met my eye had not been from a lady who protested to all and singular that M. Tadini had cured her of amaurosis.  At this I laughed in his face and told him to leave me alone.

A few days after I found myself dining with him at the house of the lady with the cataract.  She had almost made up her mind to submit to the operation, but as the rascal had mentioned my name, she wanted me to be present at a dispute between Tadini and the other oculist who came in with the dessert.

I disposed myself to listen to the arguments of the two rival professors with considerable pleasure.  The Warsaw oculist was a German, but spoke French very well; however, he attacked Tadini in Latin.  The Italian checked him by saying that their discourse must be conducted in a language intelligible to the lady, and I agreed with him.  It was plain that Tadini did not know a word of Latin.