A letter, which I received next day from Cardinal Ruffo, containing abundance of good advice and his blessing on our nuptials, in no way tended to soothe my exasperation. Basta! months elapsed before the shock of this event passed away, and I could listen with calmness to Santugo, who related to me the story of Despina, so far as he had been able to pick it up in the public places of the city. I had been most cruelly and strangely duped. Anxious to be free from those religious trammels which her parents’ bigotry and her guardian’s avarice had cast around her, the artful girl—who had never loved me—was willing that I should employ all my interest (which was great) and my money (which, alas! was little) to procure her a dispensation, that she might espouse the brother of that diavolessa the superior. He was a ruined cavalier of the Calabrias, who had lost his last ducat at the hells, and to whom the reversion of her entry-money from the convent-treasury would be very acceptable: though the beauty of the girl was temptation enough. "Basta!" said I, "Santugo, ’tis enough!" I inquired after her and her choice no more; but strove to banish the affair from my mind, when the first burst of my fury had passed away. Luckily, I had been taught philosophy, and bequeathing to the devil my share in the sex, found that I had not much more to bestow: I had not a quattrino, save what I raised by the sale of the remnant of my patrimony—the tower of St. Ermo in the upper province. Santugo would have shared his last ducat with me; but I was too proud to be dependent on any man. My legacy, the reward of my devotion, had all melted away, too, during my joyous life in the Guards: it was spent in procuring a wife for another man! I wish him joy of his spouse: if she proved as virtuous after marriage as she was before it, she must be a crown—but not of glory—to her husband. Basta! Finding myself without one beggarly bajoccho to clink upon another, I became a soldier again, and served the Knights of Malta as a musketeer against the corsairs of Barbary. On the return of our frigate to Malta, after a most successful cruise, in which we obtained abundance of plunder, slaves, and glory, I was admitted into the Italian Langue; on proving before a chapter of the order that my blood had been noble for two hundred years (easy enough for one who comes of a senatorial family), and that in my coat armorial there were the blazons of four patrician houses. A little prize-money picked up in Algeria furnished me with two hundred and sixty golden crowns, to pay my fees of diploma on passing from esquire to the rank of spurred and belted knight. In this capacity, when in command of a frigate, I defeated Osmin Carara, the celebrated corsair who so long infested these seas; and for that exploit I was made bailiff of the commandery at St. Eufemio, then consisting of sixty knights, the noblest in Italy.