I shall be delighted, in that case, to present you to all the Spanish
ministers."

This Mocenigo was the same that acquired such a reputation at Paris by
his leanings to pederasty, a vice or taste which the French hold in
horror. Later on, Mocenigo was condemned by the Council of Ten to ten
years' imprisonment for having started on an embassy to Vienna without
formal permission. Maria Theresa had intimated to the Venetian Government
that she would not receive such a character, as his habits would be the
scandal of her capital. The Venetian Government had some trouble with
Mocenigo, and as he attempted to set out for Vienna they exiled him and
chose another ambassador, whose morals were as bad, save that the new
ambassador indulged himself with Hebe and not Ganymede, which threw a
veil of decency over his proceedings.

In spite of his reputation for pederasty, Mocenigo was much liked at
Madrid. On one occasion I was at a ball, and a Spaniard noticing me with
Manucci, came up to me, and told me with an air of mystery that that
young man was the ambassador's wife. He did not know that the ambassador
was Manucci's wife; in fact, he did not understand the arrangement at
all. "Where ignorance is bliss!" etc. However, in spite of the revolting
nature of this vice, it has been a favourite one with several great men.
It was well-known to the Ancients, and those who indulged in it were
called Hermaphrodites, which symbolises not a man of two sexes but a man
with the passions of the two sexes.

I had called two or three times on the painter Mengs, who had been
painter in ordinary to his Catholic majesty for six years, and had an
excellent salary. He gave me some good dinners. His wife and family were
at Rome, while he basked in the royal favours at Madrid, enjoying the
unusual privilege of being able to speak to the king whenever he would.
At Mengs's house I trade the acquaintance of the architect Sabatini, an
extremely able man whom the king had summoned from Naples to cleanse
Madrid, which was formerly the dirtiest and most stinking town in Europe,
or, for the matter of that, in the world. Sabatini had become a rich man
by constructing drains, sewers, and closets for a city of fourteen
thousand houses. He had married by proxy the daughter of Vanvitelli, who
was also an architect at Naples, but he had never seen her. She came to
Madrid about the same time as myself. She was a beauty of eighteen, and
no sooner did she see her hu