"If," said this remarkable man, "I lay it down as an indispensable preliminary to our acquaintance, which I hope may be long and warm, that you accept me for a gentleman, it is because, as I do not happen to be one, I have devoted all my energies to demonstrating the exact contrary. No man can help the accident of his birth. My mother was an actress of Venice: God knows who was my father, but I tell myself that he was peculiarly mine. I was educated in the slips of the theatre of San Moise; at ten I ran away from home, and from the age of twelve made my fortune my own care. It was then that I found out the advantages of being what I was not, for I observed that while nobody scrupled to cheat a gentleman if he could safely do it, nobody (on the other hand) resented the fact that a gentleman cheated him. At the age of fifteen, when I served in Zante in the company of the noble Mocenigo, and received a decoration for gallantry and a commission of lieutenant, I killed my captain for permitting himself to doubt my gentility. I should be sorry to have to reckon how many more have gone his way, or for how many years I have been obliged to shed blood in every new State I have chosen to inhabit. Those days are past and over; my reputation is made; this order which I wear was presented to me by the Holy Father, and is at once my patent and my passport. If I need another, it is here." He pointed to his sword, which reposed upon a narrow ledge of the chariot, behind my back. I then told him a difficulty of my own, which was that, although I was a gentleman by birth who had waived his rank for reasons unnecessary to be named, I had no passport into the Republic of Lucca. "I think it right to inform you, cavaliere," I added, "that I also found it necessary to shed blood in Florence, and that consequently I have left that city somewhat abruptly and without a passport. I should be sorry to put you to any inconvenience on my account, and assure you that you have only to express a doubt--a hint will be enough--to be relieved of me and my wife at our first baiting-place." He clasped my hand, saying, "I like your frankness--it pleases me vastly. And I see that I can help you. I have a very commodious passport which will pass your charming lady, yourself and half a dozen children-- if you had been so precocious as to have them. Let us talk of more pleasant things than my magnanimity, if you please; the subject is naturally familiar to me."