“If he has, he will send Winckelmann to pay you for them.”
“That would be treating me like a bookseller; I will not receive any payment.”
“Then he will return the volume of the ‘Pandects’; we are sure of it, he always does so.”
“If his eminence returns me the ‘Pandects’, I will return him his funeral oration.”
At this the Pope laughed till his sides shook.
“We shall be pleased to hear the end of the story without anyone being informed of our innocent curiosity.”
With these words, a long benediction delivered with much unction informed me that my audience was at an end.
As I was leaving His Holiness’s palace, I was accosted by an old abbé, who asked me respectfully if I were not the M. Casanova who had escaped from The Leads.
“Yes,” said I, “I am the man.”
“Heaven be praised, worthy sir, that I see you again in such good estate!”