The day after Donna Pelliccia’s departure the king saw the Duke of Arcos, and told him not to be sad, but to forget the woman, who had been sent away for his own good.
“By sending her away, your majesty obliged me to turn fiction into fact, for I only knew her by speaking to her in various public places, and I had never made her the smallest present.”
“Then you never gave her twenty-five thousand doubloons?”
“Sire, I gave her double that sum, but only on the day before yesterday. Your majesty has absolute power, but if she had not received her dismissal I should never have gone to her house, nor should I have given her the smallest present.”
The king was stupefied and silent; he was probably meditating on the amount of credit a monarch should give to the gossip that his courtiers bring him.
I heard about this from M. Monnino, who was afterwards known under the title of Castille de Florida Blanca, and is now living in exile in Murcia, his native country.
After Marescalchi had gone, and I was making my preparations for my journey to Barcelona, I saw one day, at the bull fight, a woman whose appearance had a strange kind of fascination about it.
There was a knight of Alcantara at my side, and I asked him who the lady was.
“She is the famous Nina.”
“How famous?”