“My lord, your highness shall be obeyed.  I shall not allow you to touch me once, but I hope you will deign to take me under your protection.”

The two champions passed the whole morning with the foils, and the duke was hit a hundred times without being able to touch his antagonist.  At last, convinced of Dragon’s superiority, he threw down his foil and shook him by the hand, and made him his fencer-in-ordinary, with the rank of major in his regiment of Holsteiners.

Shortly after, D’Aragon having won the good graces of the duke obtained leave to hold a bank at faro in his court, and in three or four years he amassed a fortune of a hundred thousand roubles, which he took with him to the Court of King Stanislas, where games of all sorts were allowed.  When he passed through Riga, St. Heleine introduced him to Prince Charles, who begged him to call on him the next day, and to shew his skill with the foils against himself and some of his friends.  I had the honour to be of the number; and thoroughly well he beat us, for his skill was that of a demon.  I was vain enough to become angry at being hit at every pass, and told him that I should not be afraid to meet him at a game of sharps.  He was calmer, and replied by taking my hand, and saying,—­

“With the naked sword I fence in quite another style, and you are quite right not to fear anyone, for you fence very well.”

D’Aragon set out for Warsaw the next day, but he unfortunately found the place occupied by more cunning Greeks than himself.  In six months they had relieved him of his hundred thousand roubles, but such is the lot of gamesters; no craft can be more wretched than theirs.

A week before I left Riga (where I stayed two months) Campioni fled by favour of the good Prince Charles, and in a few days the Baron de St. Heleine followed him without taking leave of a noble army of creditors.  He only wrote a letter to the Englishman Collins, to whom he owed a thousand crowns, telling him that like an honest man he had left his debts where he had contracted them.  We shall hear more of these three persons in the course of two years.

Campioni left me his travelling carriage, which obliged me to use six horses on my journey to St. Petersburg.  I was sorry to leave Betty, and I kept up an epistolary correspondence with her mother throughout the whole of my stay at St. Petersburg.

I left Riga with the thermometer indicating fifteen degrees of frost, but though I travelled day and night, not leaving the carriage for the sixty hours for which my journey lasted, I did not feel the cold in the least.  I had taken care to pay all the stages in advance, and Marshal Braun, Governor of Livonia, had given me the proper passport.  On the box seat was a French servant who had begged me to allow him to wait on me for the journey in return for a seat beside the coachman.  He kept his word and served me well, and though he was but ill clad he bore the horrible