Albergoni was a gentleman of Padua, and one of my most intimate friends
twenty-five years before. He was provided with a small fortune, but an
abundance of wit, and had a great leaning towards pleasure and the
exercise of satire. He laughed at the police and the cheated husbands,
indulged in Venus and Bacchus to excess, sacrificed to the god of
pederasty, and gamed incessantly. He was now hideously ugly, but when I
knew him first he was a very Antinous.

He told me the following story:

"A club of young rakes, of whom I was one, had a casino at the Zuecca; we
passed many a pleasant hour there without hurting anyone. Some one
imagined that these meetings were the scenes of unlawful pleasures, the
engines of the law were secretly directed against us, and the casino was
shut up, and we were ordered to be arrested. All escaped except myself
and a man named Branzandi. We had to wait for our unjust sentence for two
years, but at last it appeared. My wretched fellow was condemned to lose
his head, and afterwards to be burnt, while I was sentenced to ten years'
imprisonment 'in carcere duro'. In 1765 I was set free, and went to Padua
hoping to live in peace, but my persecutors gave me no rest, and I was
accused of the same crime. I would not wait for the storm to burst, so I
fled to Rome, and two years afterwards the Council of Ten condemned me to
perpetual banishment.

"I might bear this if I had the wherewithal to live, but a brother-in-law
of mine has possessed himself of all I have, and the unjust Tribunal
winks at his misdeeds.

"A Roman attorney made me an offer of an annuity of two pawls a day on
the condition that I should renounce all claims on my estate. I refused