I got this ambassador to call the attention of his Government to the work
I had recently published, and the answer the State Inquisitors gave may
astonish my readers, but it did not astonish me. The secretary of the
famous and accursed Tribunal wrote to say that he had done well to call
the attention of the Inquisitors to this work, as the author's
presumption appeared on the title-page. He added that the work would be
examined, and in the mean time the ambassador was instructed to shew me
no signal marks of favour lest the Court should suppose he was protecting
me as a Venetian.

Nevertheless, it was the same tribunal that had facilitated my access to
the ambassador to Madrid--Mocenigo.

I told Berlendis that my visits should be limited in number, and free
from all ostentation.

I was much interested in his son's tutor; he was a priest, a man of
letters, and a poet. His name was Andreis, and he is now resident in
England, where he enjoys full liberty, the greatest of all blessings.

I spent my time at Turin very pleasantly, in the midst of a small circle
of Epicureans; there were the old Chevalier Raiberti, the Comte de la
Perouse, a certain Abbe Roubien, a delightful man, the voluptuous Comte
de Riva, and the English ambassador. To the amusements which this society
afforded I added a course of reading, but no love affairs whatever.

While I was at Turin, a milliner, Perouse's mistress, feeling herself in
'articulo mortis', swallowed the portrait of her lover instead of the
Eucharist. This incident made me compose two sonnets, which pleased me a