I found the famous general standing among his staff.
I repeated what I had told the officer. I said I had come from Rome, that I was going to Constantinople, that I carried a letter from Cardinal Acquaviva, and that the loss of my passport was an accident, not a crime.
I begged him to let me continue my journey.
He listened without moving.
"The only favour I can grant you," he said, "is to put you under arrest till you receive another passport from Rome delivered under the same name as the one you have given here. To lose a passport is a misfortune which befalls only a thoughtless, giddy man, and the cardinal will for the future know better than to put his confidence in a giddy fellow like you."
He ordered that I should be taken to the guard-house at Saint Mary's Gate, outside the city, as soon as I had written to the cardinal.
They brought me back to the inn.
Therese rose the moment she saw me. Her face searched mine before her lips could form a question.
"Well?"
"I must wait for a new passport."
"Here?"
"Under arrest."
The colour left her face.
I sat down and wrote to Cardinal Acquaviva, entreating him to send the document without delay to the war office. I sealed the letter and sent it by express. Then I turned to Therese.
"You must go to Rimini."
"No."
"You must. Wait for me there."
"I will stay in Pesaro."
"You cannot. Your remaining here would serve neither you nor me. In Rimini you will be safe, and I shall join you within ten days."
She shook her head, but tears had already begun to conquer her resistance.
I gave her one hundred sequins. She tried to refuse them. I put them in her hand and closed her fingers over the purse.
I had my trunk brought out, I saw Therese go away from the inn, and was taken to the place appointed by the general.
It is undoubtedly under such circumstances that the most determined optimist finds himself at a loss; but an easy stoicism can blunt the too sharp edge of misfortune.
My greatest sorrow was the heart-grief of Therese who, seeing me torn from her arms at the very moment of our union, was suffocated by the tears which she tried to repress.
She would not have left me if I had not made her understand that she could not remain in Pesaro, and if I had not promised to join her within ten days, never to be parted again.
But fate had decided otherwise.
When we reached the gate, the officer shut me at once in the guard-house.
I sat down on my trunk.
The officer was a taciturn Spaniard who did not even condescend to honour me with an answer, when I told him that I had money and would like to have someone to wait on me.
So much for money, which is usually eloquent.
That night I lay on a little straw, without food, among Spanish soldiers who slept, snored, muttered, and turned in their cloaks like men perfectly accustomed to discomfort.
It was the second night of the sort that my destiny had condemned me to, immediately after two delightful nights.
My good angel doubtless found some pleasure in bringing such conjunctions before my mind for the benefit of my instruction.
At all events, teachings of that description have an infallible effect upon natures of a peculiar stamp.
If you should wish to close the lips of a logician calling himself a philosopher, who dares to argue that in this life grief overbalances pleasure, ask him whether he would accept a life entirely without sorrow and happiness.
Be certain that he will not answer you, or he will shuffle, because, if he says no, he proves that he likes life such as it is, and if he likes it, he must find it agreeable, which is an utter impossibility, if life is painful.
Should he, on the contrary, answer in the affirmative, he would declare himself a fool, for it would be as much as to say that he can conceive pleasure arising from indifference, which is absurd nonsense.
Suffering is inherent in human nature; but we never suffer without entertaining the hope of recovery, or, at least, very seldom without such hope, and hope itself is a pleasure.
If it happens sometimes that man suffers without any expectation of a cure, he necessarily finds pleasure in the complete certainty of the end of his life; for the worst, in all cases, must be either a sleep arising from extreme dejection, during which we have the consolation of happy dreams or the loss of all sensitiveness.
But when we are happy, our happiness is never disturbed by the thought that it will be followed by grief. Therefore, pleasure, during its active period, is always complete, without alloy and grief is always soothed by hope.
I suppose you, dear reader, at the age of twenty, and devoting yourself to the task of making a man of yourself by furnishing your mind with all the knowledge necessary to render you a useful being through the activity of your brain.
Someone comes in and tells you, "I bring you thirty years of existence; it is the immutable decree of fate; fifteen consecutive years must be happy, and fifteen years unhappy. You are at liberty to choose the half by which you wish to begin."
Confess it candidly, dear reader, you will not require much more consideration to decide, and you will certainly begin by the unhappy series of years.
You will feel that the expectation of fifteen delightful years cannot fail to brace you up with the courage necessary to bear the unfortunate years you have to go through.
We can even surmise, with every probability of being right, that the certainty of future happiness will soothe to a considerable extent the misery of the first period.
You have already guessed, I have no doubt, the purpose of this lengthy argument. The sagacious man, believe me, can never be utterly miserable, and I most willingly agree with my friend Horace, who says that, on the contrary, such a man is always happy.
'Nisi quum pituita molesta est.'
'Except when a cold/phlegm bothers him.'
But, pray where is the man who is always suffering from a cold?
The fact is that the terrible night I passed in the guard-house of Saint Mary resulted for me in a slight loss and in a great gain.
The loss was to be away from my dear Therese. Yet I was certain, or thought myself certain, of seeing her again within ten days; so even that pain had a remedy before it had fully declared itself. As to the gain, it was in experience the true school for a man.
I gained a complete system against thoughtlessness, a system of foresight.
You may safely wager a hundred to one that a young man who has once lost his purse or his passport will not lose either a second time.
Each of those misfortunes has befallen me once only, and I might have been very often the victim of them, if experience had not taught me how much they were to be dreaded.
A thoughtless fellow is a man who has not yet found the word dread in the dictionary of his life.
The next day another officer relieved my ill-tempered Castilian.
This one had a face that pleased me at once. He was French, and his manner possessed that easy civility by which a Frenchman often makes you his friend before he has done you the smallest service.
I confess I have always been inclined to like the French and to dislike the Spaniards.
The first have, in their manners, something open, graceful, and obliging; the second too often wrap themselves in an air of unbecoming haughtiness which certainly does not prepossess in their favour.
Yet I have often been duped by Frenchmen, and never by Spaniards, and that's a proof that we ought to mistrust our tastes.
The new officer, approaching me very politely, said to me,
"To what chance, reverend sir, am I indebted for the honour of having you in my custody?"
Ah! here was a way of speaking which restored to my lungs all their elasticity!
I gave him all the particulars of my misfortune, and he found the mishap very amusing. But a man disposed to laugh at my disappointment could not be disagreeable to me, for it proved that the turn of his mind had more than one point of resemblance with mine.
He gave me a soldier to wait on me. In a short time, I had a bed, a table, and a few chairs. Better still, he had my bed placed in his own room, a kindness for which I felt real gratitude for that delicate attention.
He invited me to dine with him. I accepted gladly.
After dinner he proposed a game of piquet. I agreed, but from the beginning he saw that I was no match for him.
"You do not play badly," he said, "but you are not my match."
"That seems to be the case." I answered.
I lost three or four ducats.
He gathered the cards and smiled.
"The officer who relieves me tomorrow plays better than I do. Take my advice and do not play with him."
I thanked him, and the next day I followed his advice.
He told me also that he expected company to supper. There would be faro, he said, but I should do well to keep my money in my pocket. The banker was a Greek, and a crafty player.
I followed this second counsel too.
At supper the company arrived, lively, noisy, and already disposed to lose. The cards were brought. The bank opened.
The Greek sat behind it with the bearing of a man who had long ago ceased to believe in chance.
The punters cursed the Greek, doubled, accused fortune, and lost. The banker listened to their insults as one listens to rain from under a good roof.
When the game ended, he gathered the money he gained from his dupes with perfect composure and passed a share to the officer, who had, as I then understood, taken an interest in the bank.
This Greek was called Don Pepe il Cadetto, and by his accent I knew he was a Neapolitan.
When we were alone, I said to the officer,
"You told me the banker was a Greek."
"So he is," he said.
"A Greek from Naples?"
He laughed and explained to me the meaning of the word greek applied to a gambler, and the lesson which followed his explanation proved very useful to me in after years.
During the next five days my life was regular enough to become dull. I ate, slept, walked when they allowed it, and waited for the passport which Rome seemed in no haste to send.
On the sixth day the French officer was again on guard, and I was truly glad to see him.
He greeted me with a laugh.
"My dear abbé, I am delighted to find you still here."
I accepted the compliment for what it was worth.
That evening the same company gathered, and the same bank of faro appeared. Don Pepe sat behind the cards with his usual tranquillity.
The punters lost with increasing noise and decreasing judgment. And finally one of them raised his stick and struck the banker a violent blow across the back.
The Greek stoically feigned to take no notice. He gathered the cards and took the money.
I saw that same man again nine years later in Vienna, where he was a captain in the service of Maria Theresa and called himself d'Afflisso. Ten years after that, I found him a colonel and some time after worth a million. The last time I saw him, some thirteen or fourteen years ago, he was a galley slave.
He was handsome, and yet, by one of those contradictions which nature allows herself, he had the look of a man born for the gallows. I have seen others marked in the same way. Cagliostro had it.
Another man, still at liberty when I write these lines, has it also, though he will not fail to pay them a visit.
Should the reader feel any curiosity about it, I can whisper the name in his ear.
By the ninth or tenth day, everyone in the army knew me and liked me. I walked about almost freely, sometimes even beyond sight of the sentinel.
They were right not to fear my escape as I would have been a fool to run away when my passport was expected at any hour.
It was then, when I believed nothing remained but the arrival of a document, that the most singular adventure of my life happened to me then, and most unexpectedly.