"True; but it is not my fault. There is no water here. I have spent more than three hundred thousand crowns, but without success."
"Three hundred thousand crowns, sire! If your majesty spent that sum, there should have been abundance of water."
"Ah! ah! I see you are a hydraulic architect."
Could I tell him he was mistaken? I was afraid of displeasing him, so I simply bent my head. This could be taken for yes or no. Thank God, he did not continue to talk on this subject, or I should have been terribly put to it, for I did not know the very rudiments of hydraulics.
Still walking up and down, and turning his head right and left, he asked me what the Venetian forces, naval and military, amounted to. Now I was on my own ground. "Twenty men of war, sire, and a large number of galleys."
"And what land forces?"
"Seventy thousand men, sire, all subjects of the republic, and counting all that, only one man from each village."
"That is not true. I suppose you want to amuse me with your fables. You must be a financier; tell me, what do you think of the taxes?"
This was the first interview I had ever had with royalty. Considering his style, his abrupt change of subject, and his sudden digressions, I felt as tho I had been called on to act in one of those improvised Italian comedies in which, if the actor stops short for a word, the pit and the gallery hiss him mercilessly. I immediately assumed the style of a financier, and replied that I was acquainted with the theory of taxation.
"That is what I want," he replied, "for the practise does not concern you."