of my want of discretion
is only feigned, it is but a pretext to turn me out of her favour. She
has not understood my reserve! What would she have done, if I had painted
her in the simple apparel of the golden age, without any of those veils
which modesty imposes upon her sex!" I was sorry I had not done so. I
undressed and went to bed. My head was scarcely on the pillow when the
Abbe Gama knocked at my door. I pulled the door-string, and coming in, he
said,

"My dear sir, the cardinal wishes to see you, and I am sent by the
beautiful marchioness and Cardinal S. C., who desire you to come down."

"I am very sorry, but I cannot go; tell them the truth; I am ill in bed."

As the abbe did not return, I judged that he had faithfully acquitted
himself of the commission, and I spent a quiet night. I was not yet
dressed in the morning, when I received a note from Cardinal S. C.
inviting me to dinner, saying that he had just been bled, and that he
wanted to speak to me: he concluded by entreating me to come to him
early, even if I did not feel well.

The invitation was pressing; I could not guess what had caused it, but
the tone of the letter did not forebode anything unpleasant. I went to
church, where I was sure that Cardinal Acquaviva would see me, and he
did. After mass, his eminence beckoned to me.

"Are you truly ill?" he enquired.

"No, monsignor, I was only sleepy."

"I am very glad to hear it; but you are wrong, for you are loved.
Cardinal S. C. has been bled this morning."

"I know it, monsignor. The cardinal tells me so in this note, in which he
invites me to dine with him, with your excellency's permission."

"Certainly. But this is amusing! I did not know that he wanted a third
person."

"Will there be a third person?"

"I do not know, and I have no curiosity about it."

The cardinal left me, and everybody imagined that his eminence had spoken
to me of state affairs.

I went to my new Maecenas, whom I found in bed.

"I am compelled to observe strict diet," he said to me; "I shall have to
let you dine alone, but you will not lose by it as my cook does not know
it. What I wanted to tell you is that your stanzas are, I am afraid, too
pretty, for the marchioness adores them. If you had read them to me in
the same way that she does, I could never have made up my mind to offer
them." "But she believes them to be written by your eminence?"

"Of course."

"That is the essential point, monsignor."

"Y