"If your happiness with her was complete, I pity you. She has been violently taken from you, and you shun society in order to feed your sorrow. I have guessed right, have I not? But if I happen to take possession of her place in your heart, no one, my sweet friend, shall turn me out of it."
"But what will your lover say?"
"He will be delighted to see me happy with such a lover as you. It is in his nature."
"What an admirable nature! Such heroism is quite beyond me!"
"What sort of a life do you lead in Venice?"
"I live at the theatres, in society, in the casinos, where I fight against fortune sometimes with good sometimes with bad success."
"Do you visit the foreign ambassadors?"
"No, because I am too much acquainted with the nobility; but I know them all."
"How can you know them if you do not see them?"
"I have known them abroad. In Parma the Duke de Montalegre, the Spanish ambassador; in Vienna I knew Count Rosemberg; in Paris, about two years ago, the French ambassador."