arpet
wherever there was a fair or a cattle-market, going hungry in bad
seasons, and in our luckier days attaching ourselves to some band of
strolling posture-makers or comedians.

One day, after about a year of this life, I had the good fortune, in the
market-place of Parma, to attract the notice of a rich English nobleman
who was engaged in writing a book on the dances of the ancients. This
gentleman, though no longer young, and afflicted with that strange
English malady that obliges a man to wrap his feet in swaddling-clothes
like a new-born infant, was of a generous and paternal disposition, and
offered, if I would accompany him to Florence, to give me a home and a
genteel education. I remained with him about two years, during which
time he had me carefully instructed in music, French and the art of the
needle. In return for this, my principal duties were to perform in
antique dances before the friends of my benefactor--whose name I could
never learn to pronounce--and to read aloud to him the works of the
modern historians and philosophers.

We lived in a large palace with exceedingly high-ceilinged rooms, which
my friend would never have warmed on account of his plethoric habit, and
as I had to dance at all seasons in the light draperies worn by the
classical goddesses, I suffered terribly from chilblains and contracted
a cruel cough. To this, however, I might have resigned myself; but when
I learned from a young abate who frequented the house that the books I
was compelled to read were condemned by the Church, and could not be
perused without deadly peril to the soul, I at once resolved to fly from
such contaminating influences. Knowing that his lordship would not
consent to my leaving him, I took the matter out of his hands by
slipping out one day during the carnival, carrying with me from that
accursed house nothing but the few jewels that my benefactor had
expressed the intention of leaving me in his will. At the nearest church
I confessed my involuntary sin in reading the prohibited books, and
having received absolution and the sacrament, I joined my friend the
abate at Cafaggiolo, whence we travelled to Modena, where he was
acquainted with a theatrical manager just then in search of a Columbine.
My dancing and posturing at Florence had given me something of a name
among the dilettanti, and I was at once engaged by the manager, who took
me to Venice, where I subsequently joined the company of the excellent
T