ou would do well to avoid all
idle discussion on religious matters, both on dogma and discipline. And I
must also tell you, in order that you may not leave Spain with any harsh
ideas on the Inquisition, that the priest who affixed your name to the
church-door amongst the excommunicated has been severely reprimanded. He
ought to have given you a fatherly admonition, and, above all, enquired
as to your health, as we know that you were seriously ill at the time."

Thereupon I knelt down and kissed his hand, and went my way, well pleased
with my call.

To go back to Aranjuez. As soon as I heard that the ambassador could not
put me up at Madrid, I wrote to the worthy cobbler, Don Diego, that I
wanted a well-furnished room, a closet, a good bed, and an honest
servant. I informed him how much I was willing to spend a month, and said
I would leave Aranjuez as soon as I heard that everything was ready.

I was a good deal occupied with the question of colonising the Sierra
Morena; I wrote principally on the subject of the civil government, a
most important item in a scheme for a new colony. My articles pleased the
Marquis Grimaldi and flattered Mocenigo; for the latter hoped that I
should become governor of the colony, and that his embassy would thereby
shine with a borrowed light.

My labours did not prevent my amusing myself, and I frequented the
society of those about the Court who could tell me most of the king and
royal family. Don Varnier, a man of much frankness and intelligence, was
my principal source of information.

I asked him one day whether the king was fond of Gregorio Squillace only
because he had been once his wife's lover.

"That's an idle calumny," he replied. "If the epithet of 'chaste' can be
applied to any monarch, Charles III. certainly deserves it better than
any other. He has never touched any woman in his life except his wife,
not only out of respect or the sanctity of marriage, but also as a good
Christian. He has avoided this sin that his soul may remain pure, and so
as not to have the shame of confessing it to his chaplain. He enjoys an
iron constitution, sickness is unknown to him, and he is a thorough
Spaniard in temperament. Ever since his marriage he has paid his duty to
his wife every day, except when the state of her health compelled her to
call for a truce. In such seasons this chaste husband brought down his
fleshly desires by the fatigue of hunting and by abstinence. You can
imagine his