Madame Riviere wished to take me with her, but she could not put off her departure, and I required a week’s delay to get money and letters from Venice.  She promised to wait a week in Strassburg, and we agreed that if possible I would join her there.  She left Munich on the 18th of December.

Two days afterwards I got from Venice the bill of exchange for which I was waiting.  I made haste to pay my debts, and immediately afterwards I started for Augsburg, not so much for the sake of seeing Father Balbi, as because I wanted to make the acquaintance of the kindly dean who had rid me of him.  I reached Augsburg in seven hours after leaving Munich, and I went immediately to the house of the good ecclesiastic.  He was not in, but I found Balbi in an abbe’s dress, with his hair covered with white powder, which set off in a new but not a pleasing manner the beauties of his complexion of about the same colour as a horse chestnut.  Balbi was under forty, but he was decidedly ugly, having one of those faces in which baseness, cowardice, impudence, and malice are plainly expressed, joining to this advantage a tone of voice and manners admirably calculated to repulse anyone inclined to do him a service.  I found him comfortably housed, well looked after, and well clad; he had books and all the requisites for writing.  I complimented him upon his situation, calling him a fortunate fellow, and applying the same epithet to myself for having gained him all the advantages he enjoyed, and the hope of one day becoming a secular priest.  But the ungrateful hound, instead of thanking me, reproached me for having craftily rid myself of him, and added that, as I was going to Paris, I might as well take him with me, as the dullness of Augsburg was almost killing him.

“What do you want at Paris?”

“What do you want yourself?”

“To put my talents to account.”

“So do I.”

“Well, then, you don’t require me, and can fly on your own wings.  The people who are taking me to Paris would probably not care for me if I had you for a companion.”

“You promised not to abandon me.”

“Can a man who leaves another well provided for and an assured future be said to abandon him?”

“Well provided!  I have not got a penny.”

“What do you want with money?  You have a good table, a good lodging, clothes, linen, attendance, and so forth.  And if you want pocket-money, why don’t you ask your brethren the monks?”

“Ask monks for money?  They take it, but they don’t give it.”

“Ask your friends, then.”

“I have no friends.”

“You are to be pitied, but the reason probably is that you have never been a friend to anyone.  You ought to say masses, that is a good way of getting money.”

“I am unknown.”

“You must wait, then, till you are known, and then you can make up for lost time.”

“Your suggestions are idle; you will surely give me a few sequins.”