Five minutes afterwards whom should I see, arriving in a beautiful berlin drawn by six horses, but Croce with his wife, a lady’s maid, and two lackeys in grand livery.  He alighted, we embraced one another, and I told him, assuming an air of sadness, that he could not leave before me.  I explained how the case stood; he said I was right, scolded loudly, as if he had been a great lord, and made everybody tremble.  The postmaster had disappeared; his wife came and ordered the postillions to attend to my wants.  During that time Croce said to me that I was quite right in going back to Padua, where the public rumour had spread the report of my having left the city in consequence of an order from the police.  He informed me that the podesta had likewise expelled M. de Gondoin, a colonel in the service of the Duke of Modena, because he held a faro bank at his house.  I promised him to pay him a visit in Venice in the ensuing week.  Croce, who had dropped from the sky to assist me in a moment of great distress, had won ten thousand sequins in four evenings:  I had received five thousand for my share; and lost no time in paying my debts and in redeeming all the articles which I had been compelled to pledge.  That scamp brought me back the smiles of Fortune, and from that moment I got rid of the ill luck which had seemed to fasten on me.

I reached Padua in safety, and the postillion, who very likely out of fear had driven me in good style, was well pleased with my liberality; it was the best way of making peace with the tribe.  My arrival caused great joy to my three friends, whom my sudden departure had alarmed, with the exception of M. de Bragadin, in whose hands I had placed my cash-box the day before.  His two friends had given credence to the general report, stating that the podesta had ordered me to leave Padua.  They forgot that I was a citizen of Venice, and that the podesta could not pass such a sentence upon me without exposing himself to legal proceedings.  I was tired, but instead of going to bed I dressed myself in my best attire in order to go to the opera without a mask.  I told my friends that it was necessary for me to shew myself, so as to give the lie to all that had been reported about me by slandering tongues.  De la Haye said to me,

“I shall be delighted if all those reports are false; but you have no one to blame but yourself, for your hurried departure gave sufficient cause for all sorts of surmises.”

“And for slander.”

“That may be; but people want to know everything, and they invent when they cannot guess the truth.”

“And evil-minded fools lose no time in repeating those inventions everywhere.”

“But there can be no doubt that you wanted to kill the postillion.  Is that a calumny likewise?”

“The greatest of all.  Do you think that a good shot can miss a man when he is firing in his very face, unless he does it purposely?”

“It seems difficult; but at all events it is certain that the horse is dead, and you must pay for it.”