“Everybody knows what kind of a life you lead here, and the way the Renaud behaves, possibly without your knowing it.  I advise you to have done with her, as your character is suffering.”

She did not know what a thraldom I was under.  I had left Paris for a month, and I had neither heard of Madame d’Urfe nor of Costa.  I could not guess the reason, but I began to suspect my Italian’s fidelity.  I also feared lest my good Madame d’Urfe might be dead or have come to her senses, which would have come to the same thing so far as I was concerned; and I could not possibly return to Paris to obtain the information which was so necessary both for calming my mind and refilling my purse.

I was in a terrible state, and my sharpest pang was that I began to experience a certain abatement of my vigors, the natural result of advancing years.  I had no longer that daring born of youth and the knowledge of one’s strength, and I was not yet old enough to have learnt how to husband my forces.  Nevertheless, I made an effort and took a sudden leave of my mistress, telling her I would await her at Augsburg.  She did not try to detain me, but promised to rejoin me as soon as possible; she was engaged in selling her jewellery.  I set out preceded by Le Duc, feeling very glad that Desarmoises had chosen to stay with the wretched woman to whom he had introduced me.  When I reached my pretty house at Augsburg I took to my bed, determined not to rise till I was cured or dead.  M. Carli, my banker, recommended to me a doctor named Cephalides, a pupil of the famous Fayet, who had cured me of a similar complaint several years before.  This Cephalides was considered the best doctor in Augsburg.  He examined me and declared he could cure me by sudorifics without having recourse to the knife.  He began his treatment by putting me on a severe regimen, ordering baths, and applying mercury locally.  I endured this treatment for six weeks, at the end of which time I found myself worse than at the beginning.  I had become terribly thin, and I had two enormous inguinal tumours.  I had to make up my mind to have them lanced, but though the operation nearly killed me it did not to make me any better.  He was so clumsy as to cut the artery, causing great loss of blood which was arrested with difficulty, and would have proved fatal if it had not been for the care of M. Algardi, a Bolognese doctor in the service of the Prince-Bishop of Augsburg.

I had enough of Cephalides, and Dr. Algardi prepared in my presence eighty-six pills containing eighteen grains of manna.  I took one of these pills every morning, drinking a large glass of curds after it, and in the evening I had another pill with barley water, and this was the only sustenance I had.  This heroic treatment gave me back my health in two months and a half, in which I suffered a great deal of pain; but I did not begin to put on flesh and get back my strength till the end of the year.

It was during this time that I heard about Costa’s flight with my diamonds, watches, snuff-box, linen, rich suits, and a hundred louis which Madame d’Urfe had given him for the journey.  The worthy lady sent me a bill of exchange for fifty thousand francs, which she had happily not entrusted to the robber, and the money rescued me very opportunely from the state to which my imprudence had reduced me.