The lady replied that she did not want to live with him any more, and Acton explained to the husband that he could not be expected to drive his mistress away against her will.  He foresaw, however, that the husband would complain to the English ambassador, and determined to be before-handed with him.

In due course the husband did apply to the English ambassador, requesting him to compel Acton to restore to him his lawful wife.  He even asked the Chevalier Raiberti to write to the Commendatore Camarana, the Sardinian ambassador at Venice, to apply pressure on the Venetian Government, and he would doubtless have succeeded if M. Raiberti had done him this favour.  However, as it was he did nothing of the sort, and even gave Acton a warm welcome when he came to Turin to look into the matter.  He had left his mistress at Venice under the protection of the English consul.

The husband was ashamed to complain publicly, as he would have been confronted with the disgraceful agreement he had signed; but Berlendis maintained that he was in the right, and argued the question in the most amusing manner.  On the one hand he urged the sacred and inviolable character of the marriage rite, and on the other he shewed how the wife was bound to submit to her husband in all things.  I argued the matter with him myself, shewing him his disgraceful position in defending a man who traded on his wife’s charms, and he was obliged to give in when I assured him that the husband had offered to renew the lease for the same time and on the same terms as before.

Two years later I met Acton at Bologna, and admired the beauty whom he considered and treated as his wife.  She held on her knees a fine little Acton.

I left Turin for Parma with a Venetian who, like myself, was an exile from his country.  He had turned actor to gain a livelihood; and was going to Parma with two actresses, one of whom was interesting.  As soon as I found out who he was, we became friends, and he would have gladly made me a partner in all his amusements, by the way, if I had been in the humour to join him.

This journey to Leghorn was undertaken under the influence of chimerical ideas.  I thought I might be useful to Count Orloff, in the conquest he was going to make, as it was said, of Constantinople.  I fancied that it had been decreed by fate that without me he could never pass through the Dardanelles.  In spite of the wild ideas with which my mind was occupied, I conceived a warm friendship for my travelling companion, whose name was Angelo Bentivoglio.  The Government never forgave him a certain crime, which to the philosophic eye appears a mere trifle.  In four years later, when I describe my stay at Venice, I shall give some further account of him.