marks; but in her eyes they gave me credit for great devotedness, for
they were a proof of my constant care, and she felt that I indeed
deserved her whole love. And she truly loved me, and I returned her love,
although I never plucked a flower which fate and prejudice kept in store
for a husband. But what a contemptible husband!

Two years later she married a shoemaker, by name Pigozzo--a base, arrant
knave who beggared and ill-treated her to such an extent that her brother
had to take her home and to provide for her. Fifteen years afterwards,
having been appointed arch-priest at Saint-George de la Vallee, he took
her there with him, and when I went to pay him a visit eighteen years
ago, I found Bettina old, ill, and dying. She breathed her last in my
arms in 1776, twenty-four hours after my arrival. I will speak of her
death in good time.

About that period, my mother returned from St. Petersburg, where the
Empress Anne Iwanowa had not approved of the Italian comedy. The whole of
the troop had already returned to Italy, and my mother had travelled with
Carlin Bertinazzi, the harlequin, who died in Paris in the year 1783. As
soon as she had reached Padua, she informed Doctor Gozzi of her arrival,
and he lost no time in accompanying me to the inn where she had put up.
We dined with her, and before bidding us adieu, she presented the doctor
with a splendid fur, and gave me the skin of a lynx for Bettina. Six
months afterwards she summoned me to Venice, as she wished to see me
before leaving for Dresden, where she had contracted an engagement for
life in the service of the Elector of Saxony, Augustus III., King of
Poland. She took with her my brother Jean, then eight years old, who was
weeping bitterly when he left; I thought him very foolish, for there was
nothing very tragic in that departure. He is the only one in the family
who was wholly indebted to our mother for his fortune, although he was