In spite of his reputation for pederasty, Mocenigo was much liked at Madrid.  On one occasion I was at a ball, and a Spaniard noticing me with Manucci, came up to me, and told me with an air of mystery that that young man was the ambassador’s wife.  He did not know that the ambassador was Manucci’s wife; in fact, he did not understand the arrangement at all.  “Where ignorance is bliss!” etc.  However, in spite of the revolting nature of this vice, it has been a favourite one with several great men.  It was well-known to the Ancients, and those who indulged in it were called Hermaphrodites, which symbolises not a man of two sexes but a man with the passions of the two sexes.

I had called two or three times on the painter Mengs, who had been painter in ordinary to his Catholic majesty for six years, and had an excellent salary.  He gave me some good dinners.  His wife and family were at Rome, while he basked in the royal favours at Madrid, enjoying the unusual privilege of being able to speak to the king whenever he would.  At Mengs’s house I trade the acquaintance of the architect Sabatini, an extremely able man whom the king had summoned from Naples to cleanse Madrid, which was formerly the dirtiest and most stinking town in Europe, or, for the matter of that, in the world.  Sabatini had become a rich man by constructing drains, sewers, and closets for a city of fourteen thousand houses.  He had married by proxy the daughter of Vanvitelli, who was also an architect at Naples, but he had never seen her.  She came to Madrid about the same time as myself.  She was a beauty of eighteen, and no sooner did she see her husband than she declared she would never be his wife.  Sabatini was neither a young man nor a handsome one, but he was kind-hearted and distinguished; and when he told his young wife that she would have to choose between him and a nunnery, she determined to make the best of what she thought a bad bargain.  However, she had no reason to repent of her choice; her husband was rich, affectionate, and easygoing, and gave her everything she wanted.  I sighed and burned for her in silence, not daring to declare my love, for while the wound of the death of Charlotte was still bleeding I also began to find that women were beginning to give me the cold shoulder.

By way of amusing myself I began to go to the theatre, and the masked balls to which the Count of Aranda had established.  They were held in a room built for the purpose, and named ‘Los Scannos del Peral’.  A Spanish play is full of absurdities, but I rather relished the representations.  The ‘Autos Sacramentales’ were still represented; they were afterwards prohibited.  I could not help remarking the strange way in which the boxes are constructed by order of the wretched police.  Instead of being boarded in front they are perfectly open, being kept up by small pillars.  A devotee once said to me at the theatre that this was a very wise regulation, and he was surprised that it was not carried into force in Italy.