The ambassador's "grand" retinue looked to me anything but grand.
It consisted of a Milanese steward named Carcinelli, a priest who served as secretary though he could scarcely write, an old woman as housekeeper, a male cook with an ugly wife, and eight or ten servants.
We reached Chiozza about noon.
As soon as we landed, I asked Carcinelli, with all due politeness, where I was to lodge. He answered without ceremony.
"Wherever you please, provided you let this man know where it is, so that he can give you notice when the peotta is ready to sail. My duty," he added, "is to leave you at the lazzaretto of Ancona free of expense from the moment we leave this place. Until then enjoy yourself as well as you can."
The man indicated was the captain of the peotta.
I asked him if he could recommend a lodging.
"You may come to my house," he said, "if you do not mind sharing a large bed with the cook. His wife stays on board."
Unable to devise any better plan, I accepted the offer.
A sailor slung my trunk and led me through the streets to the honest captain's dwelling.
The room was nearly all bed. We shoved my trunk beneath it.
I laughed at the arrangement. A man without choice has no right to be delicate.
After a meal at an inn, I went out and wandered the town.
Chiozza is a peninsula, a sea port belonging to Venecia, with a population of ten thousand inhabitants. Seamen, fishermen, merchants, lawyers, and government clerks.
I went into a coffee room and had scarcely taken my seat when a young doctor of law, an old companion from my Padua days, came up with a cry of recognition.
He seized my hand as if we had parted only yesterday and immediately introduced me to a druggist whose shop stood nearby.
"This is the man you must know," he said. "His house is where all our literati gather."
Before I had time to answer, another figure entered; tall, in the habit of a Jacobin, blind in one eye. It was Corsini, whom I had known in Venecia.
He approached with exaggerated warmth, showered me with compliments, then informed me at once that I had arrived at the perfect moment.
"Tomorrow the Macaronic Academy meets," he said. "We shall have a sitting first. Each member must recite a piece of his own composition. After that, a picnic. Come with us. Honour us with one of your works."
Vanity never needs much persuasion. I accepted at once.
I read ten stanzas written for the occasion and was elected a member by unanimous applause.
At the picnic my triumph was greater. I devoured so much macaroni that they crowned me "Prince of the Academy" and laughed themselves hoarse doing it.
The young doctor, who was himself one of these academicians, brought me home and presented me to his family.
They were comfortably placed and received me with the cordiality of people who can afford kindness.
One of his sisters was amiable. The other, a professed nun, appeared to me a prodigy of beauty.
I might have enjoyed myself in a very agreeable way in the midst of that charming family during my stay in Chiozza.
But I suppose it was my destiny to meet in that place with nothing but sorrows.
The young doctor warned me that Corsini was a worthless fellow, despised by everyone, and advised me to avoid him.
I thanked him for the information, but my thoughtlessness prevented me from profiting by it.
Light headed, credulous, incapable of imagining traps, I persuaded myself that this monk, precisely because he was infamous, would be the best guide to amusement.
On the third day he proved how right my friend had been and how wrong I was.
Corsini took me to a house of ill fame, where I could have found the door without his assistance.
There, to show my mettle, I obliged a low creature whose ugliness ought to have been a sufficient antidote against any fleshly desire.
From that sewer he led me to supper at an inn where we met four scoundrels of his own stamp.
After the meal one of them began a bank of faro and I was invited to join in the game.
I should have refused. I did not.
A false pride -the worst counsellor of youth- pushed me forward.
I played and lost four sequins.
I rose, saying I would retire.
My honest friend Corsini stopped me with his arm and a friendly smile, and proposed we risk four more in partnership.
He held the bank.
It was broken.
I tried again to withdraw.
Corsini began to lament, to pity me, to declare himself miserable at having been the cause of my loss.
Then, as if struck by a bright idea, he urged me to set up a bank of twenty five sequins.
I did it.
My bank was likewise broken.
I told myself I would win it back. I played on. I played like a man drowning who grabs at weeds.
By the end of the night I had lost everything I had.
Deeply grieved, at the captain's house I threw myself down near the cook.
He woke, sniffed the air of me, and said with contempt:
"You are a libertine."
"You are right," I answered.
And that was all I could say.
Fatigue and grief crushed me at once. I slept like a man knocked senseless.
At noon my vile tormentor, Corsini, shook me awake. His one sound eye glittered with triumph.
"You are fortunate," he announced. "A very rich young man is to sup with us tonight. His friends will make him play. He will lose. You will win back everything."
"I have lost all my money," I said. "Lend me twenty sequins."
He drew back as if I had asked for his blood.
"When I lend money, I am sure to lose it. Call it superstition if you like, but I have proved it too often. Find money elsewhere. Come tonight. Farewell."
And he left me there, stripped and desperate.
I felt ashamed to confess my position to my learned friend.
I sent instead for a money lender. I opened my trunk before him and emptied its contents.
He examined everything, piece by piece. We made an inventory of my clothes.
At last, the honest broker advanced me thirty sequins on the condition that if I did not redeem the pledge within three days, all would be his.
I must do him justice. I am bound to call him an honest man, for he advised me to keep three shirts, a few pairs of stockings, and some handkerchiefs.
I would have given him everything. I was already intoxicated with that poisonous certainty that I would win back all I had lost.
A common error.
Years later I took revenge on such illusions by writing a diatribe against "presentiments."
The only foreboding worth trusting is the one that predicts evil, because it comes from the mind.
A foreboding of happiness rises from the heart, and the heart is a fool worthy of reckoning foolishly upon fickle fortune.
With the money in my pocket, I hurried to join my "honest" company, who pretended to be alarmed at not seeing me.
Supper passed without any allusion to gambling.
They praised my admirable qualities, admired my wit, toasted my future, and declared that a brilliant fortune awaited me in Rome.
After supper they still spoke of anything but play. But my evil genius sat at my elbow. I could not let the night end quietly.
I demanded my revenge aloud.
They smiled. They asked only one thing.
"If you take the bank," they said, "we will all punt."
I took the bank.
In a short time I had lost every sequin. Not one remained to console me.
I rose, pale, empty, and humiliated, and asked Corsini to pay what I owed the landlord.
He promised to do so.
Despair had me by the throat, and as if ruin were not enough, I discovered on my way home that I had met, the day before, another living specimen of the Greek woman, less beautiful, but equally treacherous.
That last stroke finished me.
I reached the captain's house like a man walking in a dream, threw myself on the bed, and slipped into a darkness so heavy it felt like fainting rather than sleep.
I remained there eleven hours.
When I woke, daylight seemed an insult. I lay staring at it with the hatred of a man who feels unworthy of the sun.
I shut my eyes again and tried to sink back under, not from laziness but from cowardice.
To be fully awake meant choosing what to do next.
Yet one thought never came. I never once considered returning to Venecia, though it would have been the wisest course.
Pride barred that door.
I would rather have died than confess my misery to the young doctor.
I even entertained the childish hope of starving quietly in bed, without moving, without speaking, without being seen.
I am certain I would not have risen if Captain Alban, master of the peotta, had not come and roused me.
"The boat is ready to sail," he said.
A man freed from a great perplexity feels relief, no matter by what means.
It seemed to me that Captain Alban had come to point out the only thing I could possibly do.
I dressed in haste.
All that remained of my possessions I tied into a handkerchief. Then I went on board.
We left the shore soon after.
By morning we anchored at Orsera, a small port of Istria.
We landed to see the place, which deserved the name of village more than city. It belonged to the Pope, the Republic of Venecia having abandoned it to the Holy See.
As I stepped onto land, a young Recollect friar joined me.
He called himself Friar Stephano of Belun and had obtained his passage through the devout kindness of Captain Alban.
He looked at my face and asked whether I was ill.
"Reverend father," I said, "I am unhappy."
"You will forget all your sorrow," he replied, "if you will come and dine with me at the house of one of our devout friends."
I had not broken my fast for thirty-six hours, and having suffered much from sea sickness during the night, my stomach was quite empty.
My erotic inconvenience made me very uncomfortable, my mind felt deeply the consciousness of my degradation, and I did not possess a groat!
I was in such a miserable state that I had no strength either to accept or to refuse anything.