I took care that my dear Leah should have no reason to repent of our connection.  How grateful and affectionate she was when I told her that I meant to stay another month!  How she blessed the bad weather which had driven me back.  We slept together every night, not excepting those nights forbidden by the laws of Moses.

I gave her the little gold heart, which might be worth ten sequins, but that would be no reward for the care she had taken of my linen.  She also made me accept some splendid Indian handkerchiefs.  Six years later I met her again at Pesaro.

I left Ancona on November 14th, and on the 15th I was at Trieste.

CHAPTER XXI

Pittoni—­Zaguri—­The Procurator Morosini—­The Venetian Consul—­Gorice—­The French Consul—­Madame Leo—­My Devotion to The State Inquisitors—­Strasoldo—­Madame Cragnoline—­General Burghausen

The landlord asked me my name, we made our agreement, and I found myself very comfortably lodged.  Next day I went to the post-office and found several letters which had been awaiting me for the last month.  I opened one from M. Dandolo, and found an open enclosure from the patrician Marco Dona, addressed to Baron Pittoni, Chief of Police.  On reading it, I found I was very warmly commended to the baron.  I hastened to call on him, and gave him the letter, which he took but did not read.  He told me that M. Donna had written to him about me, and that he would be delighted to do anything in his power for me.

I then took Mardocheus’s letter to his friend Moses Levi.  I had not the slightest idea that the letter had any reference to myself, so I gave it to the first clerk that I saw in the office.

Levi was an honest and an agreeable man, and the next day he called on me and offered me his services in the most cordial manner.  He shewed me the letter I had delivered, and I was delighted to find that it referred to myself.  The worthy Mardocheus begged him to give me a hundred sequins in case I needed any money, adding that any politeness shewn to me would be as if shewn to himself.

This behaviour on the part of Mardocheus filled me with gratitude, and reconciled me, so to speak, with the whole Jewish nation.  I wrote him a letter of thanks, offering to serve him at Venice in any way I could.

I could not help comparing the cordiality of Levi’s welcome with the formal and ceremonious reception of Baron Pittoni.  The baron was ten or twelve years younger than I. He was a man of parts, and quite devoid of prejudice.  A sworn foe of ‘meum and tuum’, and wholly incapable of economy, he left the whole care of his house to his valet, who robbed him, but the baron knew it and made no objection.  He was a determined bachelor, a gallant, and the friend and patron of libertines.  His chief defect was his forgetfulness and absence of mind, which made him mismanage important business.

He was reputed, though wrongly, to be a liar.  A liar is a person who tells falsehoods intentionally, while if Pittoni told lies it was because he had forgotten the truth.  We became good friends in the course of a month, and we have remained friends to this day.