bove her means. At sixteen he passed his examination and entered the
seminary of St Cyprian in Venice, from which he was expelled a short
time afterwards for some scandalous and immoral conduct, which would
have cost him his liberty, had not his mother managed somehow to procure
him a situation in the household of the Cardinal Acquaviva. He made but
a short stay, however, in that prelate's establishment, all restraint
being irksome to his wayward disposition, and took to travelling. Then
began that existence of adventure and intrigue which only ended with his
death. He visited Rome, Naples, Corfu and Constantinople. By turns
journalist, preacher, abbe, diplomatist, he was nothing very long,
except _homme a bonnes fortunes_, which profession he cultivated till
the end of his days. In 1755, having returned to Venice, he was
denounced as a spy and imprisoned. On the 1st of November 1756 he
succeeded in escaping, and made his way to Paris. Here he was made
director of the state lotteries, gained much financial reputation and a
considerable fortune, and frequented the society of the most notable
French men and women of the day. In 1759 he set out again on his
travels. He visited in turn the Netherlands, South Germany,
Switzerland--where he made the acquaintance of Voltaire,--Savoy,
southern France, Florence---whence he was expelled,--and Rome, where the
pope gave him the order of the Golden Spur. In 1761 he returned to
Paris, and for the next four or five years lived partly here, partly in
England, South Germany and Italy. In 1764 he was in Berlin, where he
refused the offer of a post made him by Frederick II. He then travelled
by way of Riga and St Petersburg to Warsaw, where he was favourably
received by King Stanislaus Poniatowski. A scandal, followed by a duel,
forced him to flee, and he returned by a devious route to Paris, only to
find a _lettre de cachet_ awaiting him, which drove him to seek refuge
in Spain. Expelled from Madrid in 1769, he went by way of Aix--where he
met Cagliostro--to Italy once more. From 1774, with which year his
memoirs close, he was a police spy in the service of the Venetian
inquisitors of state; but in 1782, in consequence of a satirical libel
on one of his patrician patrons, he had once more to go into exile. In
1785 he was appointed by Count Waldstein, an old Paris acquaintance, his
librarian at the chateau of Dux in Bohemia. Here he lived until his
death, which probably occurred on the 4th