"You would be wrong, for your husband would not have been clever enough to cure your fright in the way I have done."
"True, again. One learns some curious things in your company; but we shall not travel tete-a-tete again."
We reached Pasean an hour before our friends. We get out of the chaise, and my fair mistress ran off to her chamber, while I was looking for a crown for the postillion. I saw that he was grinning.
"What are you laughing at?"
"Oh! you know."
"Here, take this ducat and keep a quiet tongue in your head."
CHAPTER VI
My Grandmother's Death and Its Consequences I Lose M. de Malipiero's
Friendship—I Have No Longer a Home—La Tintoretta—I Am Sent to a
Clerical Seminary—I Am Expelled From It, and Confined in a Fortress
During supper the conversation turned altogether upon the storm, and the official, who knew the weakness of his wife, told me that he was quite certain I would never travel with her again. "Nor I with him," his wife remarked, "for, in his fearful impiety, he exorcised the lightning with jokes."
Henceforth she avoided me so skilfully that I never could contrive another interview with her.