ted he had only
repeated common rumour, and professed his joy at finding it had been
mistaken.

This ought to have been enough for me, but I continued obdurate.

M. de R---- said the fact of my being sent to the galleys having been
rumoured was no justification for his repeating it.

"And furthermore," he proceeded, "M. Casanova's suspicion that you were
going to assassinate him is justified by your giving a false name, for
the plaintiff maintains that you are not Count Marazzani at all. He
offers to furnish surety on this behalf, and if M. Casanova does you
wrong, his bail will escheat to you as damages. In the mean time you will
remain in prison till we have further information about your real
status."

He was taken back, and as the poor devil had not a penny in his pocket it
would have been superfluous to tell the bargedlo to treat him severely.

M. de R wrote to the Swiss agent at Parma to obtain the necessary
information; but as the rascal knew this would be against him, he wrote
me a humble letter, in which he confessed that he was the son of a poor
shopkeeper of Bobbio, and although his name was really Marazzani, he had
nothing to do with the Marazzanis of Plaisance. He begged me to set him
at liberty.

I shewed the letter to M. de R----, who let him out of prison with orders
to leave Lugano in twenty-four hours.

I thought I had been rather too harsh with him, and gave the poor devil
some money to take him to Augsburg, and also a letter for M. de
Sellentin, who was recruiting there for the Prussian king. We shall hear
of Marazzani again.

The Chevalier de Breche came to the Lugano Fair to buy some horses, and
stopped a fortnight. I often met him at M. de R----'s, for whose wife he
had a great admiration, and I was sorry to see him go.

I left Lugano myself a few days later, having made up my mind to winter
in Turin, where I hoped to see some pleasant society.

Before I left I received a friendly letter from Prince Lubomirski, with a
bill for a hundred ducats, in payment of fifty copies of my book. The
prince had become lord high marshal on the death of Count Bilinski.

When I got to Turin I found a letter from the noble Venetian M. Girolamo
Zulian, the same that had given me an introduction to Mocenigo. His
letter contained an enclosure to M. Berlendis, the representative of the
Republic at Turin, who thanked me for having enabled him to receive me.

The ambassador, a rich man, and a great lover of