this patrician estate, though with no pretence to patrician splendor.
All these successes were ultimately due to the hundred and fifty gold
pieces that Casanova had presented to Amalia, or rather to her mother.
But for this magical aid, Olivo's lot would still have been the same.
He would still have been giving instruction in reading and writing to
ill-behaved youngsters. Most likely, he would have been an old bachelor
and Amalia an old maid.

Casanova let him ramble on without paying much heed. The incident was
one among many of the date to which it belonged. As he turned it over in
his mind, it seemed to him the most trivial of them all, it had hardly
even troubled the waters of memory.

He had been travelling from Rome to Turin or Paris--he had forgotten
which. During a brief stay in Mantua, he caught sight of Amalia in
church one morning. Pleased with her appearance, with her handsome but
pale and somewhat woebegone face, he gallantly addressed her a friendly
question. In those days everyone had been complaisant to Casanova.
Gladly opening her heart to him, the girl told him that she was not well
off; that she was in love with an usher who was likewise poor; that his
father and her own mother were both unwilling to give their consent to
so inauspicious a union. Casanova promptly declared himself ready
to help matters on. He sought an introduction to Amalia's mother, a
good-looking widow of thirty-six who was still quite worthy of being
courted. Ere long Casanova was on such intimate terms with her that
his word was law. When her consent to the match had been won, Olivo's
father, a merchant in reduced circumstances, was no longer adverse,
being specially influenced by the fact that Casanova (presented to him
as a distant relative of the bride's mother) undertook to defray the
expenses of the wedding and to provide part of the dowry. To Amalia, her