ut if
you wish to remain on friendly terms with me give up all idea of leading
my three friends astray."

"You are very caustic this morning."

"I lost all my money last night.

"Then I have chosen a bad time. Farewell."

From that day, De la Haye became my secret enemy, and to him I was in a
great measure indebted, two years later, for my imprisonment under The
Leads of Venice; not owing to his slanders, for I do not believe he was
capable of that, Jesuit though he was--and even amongst such people there
is sometimes some honourable feeling--but through the mystical
insinuations which he made in the presence of bigoted persons. I must
give fair notice to my readers that, if they are fond of such people,
they must not read these Memoirs, for they belong to a tribe which I have
good reason to attack unmercifully.

The fine marriage was never again alluded to. M. Dandolo continued to
visit his beautiful widow every day, and I took care to elicit from
Paralis a strong interdiction ever to put my foot in her house.

Don Antonio Croce, a young Milanese whom I had known in Reggio, a
confirmed gambler, and a downright clever hand in securing the favours of
Dame Fortune, called on me a few minutes after De la Haye had retired. He
told me that, having seen me lose all my money the night before, he had
come to offer me the means of retrieving my losses, if I would take an
equal interest with him in a faro bank that he meant to hold at his
house, and in which he would have as punters seven or eight rich
foreigners who were courting his wife.

"If you will put three hundred sequins in my bank," he added, "you shall
be my partner. I have three hundred sequins myself, but that is not
enough because the punters play high. Come and dine at my house, and you
will make their acquaintance. We can play next Friday as there will be no
opera, and you may rely upon our winning plenty of gold, for a certain
Gilenspetz, a Swede, may lose twenty thousand sequins."

I was without any resources, or at all events I could expect no
assistance except from M. de Bragadin upon whom I felt ashamed of
encroaching. I was well aware that the proposal made by Croce was not
strictly moral, and that I might have chosen a more honourable society;
but if I had refused, the purse of Madame Croce's admirers would not have
been more mercifully treated; another would have profited by that stroke
of good fortune. I was therefore not rigid enough to refuse m