can conceive a boy or a girl. No doubt my readers will disbelieve this
assertion, but their incredulity would cease if I instructed them in the
mysterious science of the negresses.

Count Rosenberg, grand chamberlain of the emperor, came on a visit to
Trieste in company with an Abbe Casti, whose acquaintance I wished to
make on account of some extremely blasphemous poems he had written.
However, I was disappointed; and instead of a man of parts, I found the
abbe to be an impudent worthless fellow, whose only merit was a knack of
versification.

Count Rosenberg took the abbe with him, because he was useful in the
capacities of a fool and a pimp-occupations well suited to his morals,
though by no means agreeable to his ecclesiastical status. In those days
syphilis had not completely destroyed his uvula.

I heard that this shameless profligate, this paltry poetaster, had been
named poet to the emperor. What a dishonour to the memory of the great
Metastasio, a man free from all vices, adorned with all virtues, and of
the most singular ability.

Casti had neither a fine style, nor a knowledge of dramatic requirements,
as appears from two or three comic operas composed by him, in which the
reader will find nothing but foolish buffooneries badly put together. In
one of these comic operas he makes use of slander against King Theodore
and the Venetian Republic, which he turns into ridicule by means of
pitiful lies.

In another piece called The Cave of Trophonius, Casti made himself the
laughing-stock of the literary world by making a display of useless