The next morning I awoke from my sleep, having had a most vivid dream. I thought I was in a shop, and the man serving me said, "If you take any numbers in the next lottery, take numbers 2, 18, and 9." This was extraordinary, and I immediately told the family about it: 2, 18, 9 (three numbers meant a _terno_, in other words, a _fortune_). Mr. H---- said, "Let us look out these numbers in the _Libro di Sogni_ (the Book of Dreams)," and sent out to buy the book. Imagine our feelings! Number 2 meant _caduta d'una finestra_ (fall from a window); number 18 meant _morte subito_ (sudden death), and number 9 meant _ospedale_ (hospital). Just what had happened; the man had fallen from the window and had been carried dead to the hospital! Perhaps you don't know what a tremendous part the lottery plays in Italy; it is to an Italian what sausages and beer are to a German. An Italian will spend his last _soldo_ to buy a ticket. He simply cannot live without it. The numbers are drawn every Saturday morning at twelve o'clock, and are instantly exposed in all the tobacco-shops in the town. An hour after, whether lucky or unlucky, the Italian buys a new ticket for the following week, and lives on hope and dreams until the next Saturday; and when any event happens or any dream comes to him he searches in the dream-book for a number corresponding to them, and he is off like lightning to buy a ticket. I was told that the Marquis Rudini, on hearing that his mother had met her death in a railroad accident, sought in the dream-book for the number attached to "railroad accident," and bought a ticket before going to get her remains. A winning _terno_ brings its lucky owner I don't know exactly how much-- but I know it is something enormous. Well, this would be a _terno_ worth having. My dream, coming as it did straight from the blue, must be infallibility itself, and we felt perfectly sure that the three magical numbers would bring a fortune for every one of us, and we all sent out and bought tickets with all the money we could spare. This was on Thursday, and we should have to wait two whole days before we became the roaring millionaires we certainly were going to be, and we strutted about thinking what presents we would make, what jewels we would buy; in fact, how we would use our fortunes! We sat up late at night discussing the wisest and best way to invest our money, and I could not sleep for fear of a _contre-coup_ in the shape of another dream. For instance, if I should dream of a cat miauling on a roof, it would mean disappointment. It would never do to give fate a chance like that!