“And will you help me to succeed?”
“Perhaps.”
“Ah, dear marchioness; you need only speak to make a man happy. You have made me really so, and I am leaving you full of ardour.”
On leaving this charming conversationalist I went to the theatre and then to the faro-table, where I saw the masquer who had won three hundred sequins the evening before. This night he was very unlucky. He had lost two thousand sequins, and in the course of the next hour his losses had doubled. Canano threw down his cards and rose, saying, “That will do.” The masquer left the table. He was a Genoese named Spinola.
“The bank is prosperous,” I remarked to Canano.
“Yes,” he replied, “but it is not always so. Pierrot was very lucky the other night.”
“You did not recognize me in the least?”
“No, I was so firmly persuaded that the beggar was you. You know who he is?”
“I haven’t an idea. I never saw him before that day.” In this last particular I did not lie.
“It is said that they are Venetians, and that they went to Bergamo.”