t. Reaching a
convenient spot, we fought by the bright light of the moon, and I was
fortunate enough to give him a gash across the shoulder. He could not
move his arm, and he had to cry for mercy.

After that meeting, I went to bed and slept quietly, but in the morning I
related the whole affair to my father, and he advised me to leave Padua
immediately, which I did.

Count Medini remained my enemy through all his life. I shall have
occasion to speak of him again when I reach Naples.

The remainder of the year 1746 passed off quietly, without any events of
importance. Fortune was now favourable to me and now adverse.

Towards the end of January, 1747, I received a letter from the young
countess A---- S----, who had married the Marquis of----. She entreated me
not to appear to know her, if by chance I visited the town in which she
resided, for she had the happiness of having linked her destiny to that
of a man who had won her heart after he had obtained her hand.

I had already heard from her brother that, after their return to C----,
her mother had taken her to the city from which her letter was written,
and there, in the house of a relative with whom she was residing, she had
made the acquaintance of the man who had taken upon himself the charge of
her future welfare and happiness. I saw her one year afterwards, and if
it had not been for her letter, I should certainly have solicited an
introduction to her husband. Yet, peace of mind has greater charms even
than love; but, when love is in the way, we do not think so.

For a fortnight I was the lover of a young Venetian girl, very handsome,
whom her father, a certain Ramon, exposed to public admiration as a
dancer at the theatre. I might have remained longer her captive, if
marriage had not forcibly broken my chains. Her protectress, Madame
Cecilia Valmarano, found her a very proper husband in the person of a
French dancer, called Binet, who had assumed the name of Binetti, and
thus his young wife had not to become a French woman; she soon won great
fame in more ways than one. She was strangely privileged; time with its
heavy hand seemed to have no power over her. She always appeared young,
even in the eyes of the best judges of faded, bygone female beauty. Men,
as a general rule, do not ask for anything more, and they are right in
not racking their brain for the sake of being convinced that they are the
dupes of external appearance. The last lover that the wonderf