“I shall be delighted if all those reports are false; but you have no one to blame but yourself, for your hurried departure gave sufficient cause for all sorts of surmises.”
“And for slander.”
“That may be; but people want to know everything, and they invent when they cannot guess the truth.”
“And evil-minded fools lose no time in repeating those inventions everywhere.”
“But there can be no doubt that you wanted to kill the postillion. Is that a calumny likewise?”
“The greatest of all. Do you think that a good shot can miss a man when he is firing in his very face, unless he does it purposely?”
“It seems difficult; but at all events it is certain that the horse is dead, and you must pay for it.”
“No, sir, not even if the horse belonged to you, for the postillion preceded me. You know a great many things; do you happen to know the posting regulations? Besides, I was in a great hurry because I had promised a pretty woman to breakfast with her, and such engagements, as you are well aware, cannot be broken.”
Master de la Haye looked angry at the rather caustic irony with which I had sprinkled the dialogue; but he was still more vexed when, taking some gold out of my pocket, I returned to him the sum he had lent me in Vienna. A man never argues well except when his purse is well filled; then his spirits are pitched in a high key, unless he should happen to be stupefied by some passion raging in his soul.
M. de Bragadin thought I was quite right to shew myself at the opera without a mask.