The want of elegance which had spared him an outlay of a hundred thousand francs had deprived him of a profit of three hundred thousand.

He presented me with a copy, which he sent to my inn, with an immense folio volume entitled “Marmora Pisaurentia,” which I had no time to examine.

I was much pleased with the marchioness, who had three daughters and two sons, all good-looking and well bred.

The marchioness was a woman of the world, while her husband’s interests were confined to his books.  This difference in disposition sometimes gave rise to a slight element of discord, but a stranger would never have noticed it if he had not been told.

Fifty years ago a wise man said to me:  “Every family is troubled by some small tragedy, which should be kept private with the greatest care.  In fine, people should learn to wash their dirty linen in private.”

The marchioness paid me great attention during the five days I spent at Pesaro.  In the day she drove me from one country house to another, and at night she introduced me to all the nobility of the town.

The marquis might have been fifty then.  He was cold by temperament, had no other passion but that of study, and his morals were pure.  He had founded an academy of which he was the president.  Its design was a fly, in allusion to his name Mosca, with the words ‘de me ce’, that is to say, take away ‘c’ from ‘musca’ and you have ‘musa’.

His only failing was that which the monks regard as his finest quality, he was religious to excess, and this excess of religion went beyond the bounds where ‘nequit consistere rectum’.

But which is the better, to go beyond these bounds, or not to come up to them?  I cannot venture to decide the question.  Horace says,—­

        “Nulla est mihi religio!”

and it is the beginning of an ode in which he condemns philosophy for estranging him from religion.

Excess of every kind is bad.

I left Pesaro delighted with the good company I had met, and only sorry I had not seen the marquis’s brother who was praised by everyone.

CHAPTER XX

A Jew Named Mardocheus Becomes My Travelling Companion—­He Persuades Me to Lodge in His House—­I Fall in Love With His Daughter Leah—­After a Stay of Six Weeks I Go to Trieste

Some time elapsed before I had time to examine the Marquis of Mosca’s collection of Latin poets, amongst which the ‘Priapeia’ found no place.

No doubt this work bore witness to his love for literature but not to his learning, for there was nothing of his own in it.  All he had done was to classify each fragment in chronological order.  I should have liked to see notes, comments, explanations, and such like; but there was nothing of the kind.  Besides, the type was not elegant, the margins were poor, the paper common, and misprints not infrequent.  All these are bad faults, especially in a work which should have become a classic.  Consequently, the book was not a profitable one; and as the marquis was not a rich man he was occasionally reproached by his wife for the money he had expended.