"Certainly. But this is amusing! I did not know that he wanted a third
person."

"Will there be a third person?"

"I do not know, and I have no curiosity about it."

The cardinal left me, and everybody imagined that his eminence had spoken
to me of state affairs.

I went to my new Maecenas, whom I found in bed.

"I am compelled to observe strict diet," he said to me; "I shall have to
let you dine alone, but you will not lose by it as my cook does not know
it. What I wanted to tell you is that your stanzas are, I am afraid, too
pretty, for the marchioness adores them. If you had read them to me in
the same way that she does, I could never have made up my mind to offer
them." "But she believes them to be written by your eminence?"

"Of course."

"That is the essential point, monsignor."

"Yes; but what should I do if she took it into her head to compose some
new stanzas for me?"

"You would answer through the same pen, for you can dispose of me night
and day, and rely upon the utmost secrecy."