Count Vitzthum came to see me at seven o’clock.  He said the empress had told Prince Kaunitz that Schrotembach considered my narrative as pure romance.  His theory was that I had held a bank at faro with sharpers’ cards, and had dealt with both hands the arm in the sling being a mere pretence.  I had then been taken in the act by one of the gamesters, and my unjust gains had been very properly taken from me.  My detector had then handed over my purse, containing forty ducats, to the police, and the money had of course been confiscated.  The empress had to choose between believing Schrotembach and dismissing him; and she was not inclined to do the latter, as it would be a difficult matter to find him a successor in his difficult and odious task of keeping Vienna clear of human vermin.

“This is what Prince Kaunitz asked me to tell you.  But you need not be afraid of any violence, and you can go when you like.”

“Then I am to be robbed of two hundred ducats with impunity.  The empress might at least reimburse me if she does nothing more.  Please to ask the prince whether I can ask the sovereign to give me that satisfaction; the least I can demand.”

“I will tell him what you say.”

“If not, I shall leave; for what can I do in a town where I can only drive, and where the Government keeps assassins in its pay?”

“You are right.  We are all sure that Pocchini has calumniated you.  The girl who recites Latin verses is well known, but none know her address.  I must advise you not to publish your tale as long as you are in Vienna, as it places Schrotembach in a very bad light, and you see the empress has to support him in the exercise of his authority.”

“I see the force of your argument, and I shall have to devour my anger.  I will leave Vienna as soon as the washerwoman sends home my linen, but I will have the story printed in all its black injustice.”

“The empress is prejudiced against you, I don’t know by whom.”

“I know, though; it is that infernal old hag, Countess Salmor.”

The next day I received a letter from Count Vitzthum, in which he said that Prince Kaunitz advised me to forget the two hundred ducats, that the girl and her so-called mother had left Vienna to all appearance, as someone had gone to the address and had failed to find her.

I saw that I could do nothing, and resolved to depart in peace, and afterwards to publish the whole story and to hang Pocchini with my own hands when next I met him.  I did neither the one nor the other.

About that time a young lady of the Salis de Coire family arrived at Vienna without any companion.  The imperial hangman Schrotembach, ordered her to leave Vienna in two days.  She replied that she would leave exactly when she felt inclined.  The magistrate consigned her to imprisonment in a convent, and she was there still when I left.  The emperor went to see her, and the empress, his mother, asked him what he thought of her.  His answer was, “I thought her much more amusing than Schrotembach.”