“They were at me about it for three hours yesterday.”
“What kind of questions did they ask you?”
“They wished to know what banker furnished me with money for my expenses. I told them I had not got a banker, and that I lived by borrowing from my friends, in the expectation of becoming one of the king’s body-guard. They then asked me how it was that the Parmese ambassador knew nothing about me, and I replied that I had never been presented to him.
“‘Without the favour of your ambassador,’ they objected, ‘you could never join the royal guard, and you must be aware of that, but the king’s majesty shall give you employment where you will stand in need of no commendation;’ and so the alcalde left me. If the Venetian ambassador does not interpose in your behalf you will be treated in the same way.”
I concealed my rage, and sat down on a bed, which I left after three hours, as I found myself covered with the disgusting vermin which seem endemic in Spain. The very sight of them made me sick. I stood upright, motionless, and silent, devouring the bile which consumed me.
There was no good in talking; I must write; but where was I to find writing materials? However, I resolved to wait in silence; my time must come, sooner or later.
At noon Marazzini told me that he knew a soldier for whose trustworthiness he would answer, and who would get me my dinner if I gave him the money.
“I have no appetite,” I replied, “and I am not going to give a farthing to anyone till the stolen crown is restored to me.”
He made an uproar over this piece of cheating, but the soldiers only laughed at him. My page then asked him to intercede with me, as he was hungry, and had no money wherewith to buy food.
“I will not give him a farthing; he is no longer in my service, and would to God I had never seen him!”