I passed, I suppose, some six weeks without news, but not without hope, of Donna Aurelia; and I am ashamed to add that the pleasures and interests of the world obliterated in me those obligations of gratitude and honour which I owed to the friend of my misfortunes.  But so I have always found it, that the more respect a man has from the world, the less he has to give it in return.  It is as if, knowing his own worth too well, he was able to put a just estimate upon his tributary.  I will only say in my defence that I knew Virginia to be safe from positive danger.

CHAPTER XXI

MY DIVERSIONS:  COUNT GIRALDI

My new friend, as I must call him, since so he professed himself a dozen times a week, was Count Amadeo Giraldi, one of the three members of the Secret Cabinet of the Grand Duke, and the most influential and respectable of the three.  He was a gentleman of some forty years, distinguished in presence and address, of suave manners and a cynicism past praying for.  This tainted philosophic habit had permeated him to the soul, so that, not only was he naturally a sceptic in matters of received opinion, but found a perverse relish in his own misfortune, until he was become, indeed, sceptical of scepticism, and found himself, at times, in real danger of proving a sincere Christian.

So strange a result of philosophy, reacting upon itself, however, did not disturb his serenity, but, on the contrary, added to his diversions; for he confessed that his highest pleasure in this life was to discover fresh follies of which he could be capable.  He considered himself as an inexhaustible quarry of humours, vanities, jealousies, whims, absurd enthusiasms, absurd mortifications.  He was able, as he said, to sit at his ease in the side-scene and see himself jigging on the stage in motley or the tragic sock—­see himself as a lover, and cry aloud in delight at the mad persistence of the fool he appeared; see himself directing the affairs of the nation, and be ready to die of laughing at himself for pretending to be serious, and at his countrymen for thinking him so.  He loved art and spent large sums upon his collection; yet, said he, “I should grudge the money for other occasions did it not furnish me with the entrancing spectacle of a middle-aged statesman panting after masterpieces, fingering this or that painted board, and staking his position in this world and the next upon the momentous question, Is this ear in the manner of Fra Angelico? or, Could Mantegna have so foreshortened a leg?  I tell you, Don Francis, there is no more outrageous comedy, no more fantastic extravaganza playing in Venice at this hour than every moment of my own life can furnish me with.  What!  I hold in my hand the destinies of a million of souls, and the iron enters into mine—­not because those others are in danger, not because those others are enslaved—­no! but because at Donna Violante’s