let for sixty ducats a year to the majordomo of
a Venetian nobleman. This man left Venice with his master on an
embassy, giving me no notice that he had sold his furniture and handed
over my casino to the mistress of some man about the town. By a series
of similar changes, the tenement passed successively through the hands
of several women of the same sort. I always got the rent and asked no
questions. The best of it was that the money was punctually paid me by
priests, who uttered panegyrics on the heroism of my female tenants. The
last of these heroines sent to tell me that my house needed certain
repairs. Accordingly I went there, and was received by a well-restored
relic of womanhood, who pointed out the alterations she judged necessary
in her dwelling-place. Casting my eyes over the lodgings, I thought that
they would serve my purpose admirably, and told the lady so. In a moment
she changed her honeyed tone and language of affected flattery to oaths
and threats and declarations that nothing in the world would make her
turn out. I phlegmatically remarked that she had no lease, that my
lessee had no power to sublet, and that I would grant her sufficient
time to seek another nest. In such matters, as is well known to readers
of these Memoirs, I have always had some trouble. But at last, by taking
over certain pieces of damaged furniture, I came to terms with the Nymph
of Cocytus, and installed myself in my casino. I did it up, and stayed
there fourteen years, letting on lease my former abode at S. Cassiano. I
should have been there still, had not my brother Almoro written to say
that he was tired of Friuli. A widower, with a son and daughter, he
should like to send the former to the university at Padua, and to make a
home with me in Venice. I was always ready to oblige my brother, and
this casino could not hold us all. Accordingly, we took a larger house
at S. Benedetto; and here my brother, much aged in my eyes, as I must
probably have seemed in his, came to live with me. His children, whom I
had only known as little creatures, had grown into giants. Before a year
was over, the daughter made a good match in Friuli, and the son went to
Padua, whence the troubles of the Revolution drove him away before he
had obtained the laurels of a doctor's degree. In that commotion the
laurel, destined for the brows of students, was consecrated to the
kitchen and the garnishing of dishes on the table."[88]

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