subject than I am." She replied by laughing, but Cartz said, very
wittily,

"As Gardella is only a boatman's daughter, like Binetti, the latter
thinks, and very rightly, that you ought to have given her the refusal of
your cousinship."

Next day I had a pleasant dinner with the favourite, though she told me
that, not having seen the duke, she could not tell me how he would take
my pleasantry, which her mother resented very much. This mother of hers,
a woman of the lowest birth, had become very proud since her daughter was
a prince's mistress, and thought my relationship a blot on their
escutcheon. She had the impudence to tell me that her relations had never
been players, without reflecting that it must be worse to descend to this
estate than to rise from it, if it were dishonourable. I ought to have
pitied her, but not being of a forbearing nature I retorted by asking if
her sister was still alive, a question which made her frown and to which
she gave no answer. The sister I spoke of was a fat blind woman, who
begged on a bridge in Venice.

After having spent a pleasant day with the favourite, who was the oldest
of my theatrical friends, I left her, promising to come to breakfast the
next day; but as I was going out the porter bade me not to put my feet
there again, but would not say on whose authority he gave me this polite
order. It would have been wiser to hold my tongue, as this stroke must
have come from the mother; or, perhaps, from the daughter, whose vanity I
had wounded: she was a good-enough actress to conceal her anger.

I was angry with myself, and went away in an ill humour; I was humiliated
to see myself treated in such a manner by a wretched wanton of an