letter-writers should be held in contempt, but one ought to know how, on
occasion, to make the best of advice given in that way. I did nothing,
and made a great mistake.

About the same time a man named Manuzzi, a stone setter for his first
trade, and also a spy, a vile agent of the State Inquisitors--a man of
whom I knew nothing--found a way to make my acquaintance by offering to
let me have diamonds on credit, and by this means he got the entry of my
house. As he was looking at some books scattered here and there about the
room, he stopped short at the manuscripts which were on magic. Enjoying
foolishly enough, his look of astonishment, I shewed him the books which
teach one how to summon the elementary spirits. My readers will, I hope,
do me the favour to believe that I put no faith in these conjuring books,
but I had them by me and used to amuse myself with them as one does amuse
one's self with the multitudinous follies which proceed from the heads of
visionaries. A few days after, the traitor came to see me and told me
that a collector, whose name he might not tell me, was ready to give me a
thousand sequins for my five books, but that he would like to examine
them first to see if they were genuine. As he promised to let me have
them back in twenty-four hours, and not thinking much about the matter, I
let him have them. He did not fail to bring them back the next day,
telling me that the collector thought them forgeries. I found out, some
years after, that he had taken them to the State Inquisitors, who thus
discovered that I was a notable magician.

Everything that happened throughout this fatal month tended to my ruin,
for Madame Memmo, mother of Andre, Bernard, and Laurent Memmo, had taken
it into her head that I had inclined her sons to atheistic opinions, and
took counsel with the old knight Antony Mocenigo, M. de Bragadin's uncle,
who was angry with me, because, as he said, I had conspired to seduce his