has special reasons for not wishing them to be depreciated."

I wrote to Possano, and sent for a pair of scales. We weighed the gold I
had won at biribi, and every single piece had been clipped. M. Grimaldi
said he would have them defaced and sold to a jeweller.

When we got back to the dining-room we found everybody at play. M.
Grimaldi proposed that I should play at quinze with him. I detested the
game, but as he was my guest I felt it would be impolite to refuse, and
in four hours I had lost five hundred sequins.

Next morning the marquis told me that Possano was out of prison, and that
he had been given the value of the coin. He brought me thirteen hundred
sequins which had resulted from the sale of the gold. We agreed that I
was to call on Madame Isola-Bella the next day, when he would give me my
revenge at quinze.

I kept the appointment, and lost three thousand sequins. I paid him a
thousand the next day, and gave him two bills of exchange, payable by
myself, for the other two thousand. When these bills were presented I was
in England, and being badly off I had to have them protested. Five years
later, when I was at Barcelona, M. de Grimaldi was urged by a traitor to
have me imprisoned, but he knew enough of me to be sure that if I did not
meet the bills it was from sheer inability to do so. He even wrote me a
very polite letter, in which he gave the name of my enemy, assuring me
that he would never take any steps to compel me to pay the money. This
enemy was Possano, who was also at Barcelona, though I was not aware of
his presence. I will speak of the circumstance in due time, but I cannot
help remarking that all who aided me in my pranks with Madame d'Urfe
proved traitors, with the exception of a Venetian girl, whose