Who would have supposed that a day so agreeable would have been followed by the most fatal of my life! The next morning I rose to go to the Church called _Annunciata_, one of the finest in the city, to hear Mass. Hither all the fashionable people of both sexes used to resort. I met there one of my mistress’s young relations, who was inclined to the match. I accosted him, and we insensibly fell into a conversation upon my intended marriage with his cousin. Whilst I was talking with him, a beggar, whom I had already sent away twice without deigning to look at him, returned a third time to the charge to ask alms. Earnestly engaged as I was, in conversation so interesting, I grew impatient, and struck him in the face with my glove. “You rogue of a beggar, will you not let me be in quiet for you?” The poor man, who expected quite a different sort of treatment from me, gave me this answer: “Oh, Mr. Guzman, if you had been treated thus when you were a beggar like me, you would not have set up for a great Lord as you do now.” This man’s voice and words, which I heard and knew distinctly, struck me to the heart; I turned my head about, and remembered he was one of my dear comrades at Rome, when I was one of their fraternity. I changed colour in an instant, I blushed, and looked on him with eyes sparkling with rage and choler. But so far from being dismayed at it, he laughed, and made mouths and grimaces at me, and muttered something as he retired. All the gentlemen that were round us, and especially one of my rivals who had heard in what manner the beggar had spoken to me, and observed that I was out of countenance at the sight of him, were quite surprised. My rival who had more interest than any to know the bottom of this adventure, followed the beggar to the Church door, where he stood to ask alms. He took him aside, and after having slipped a few pieces of money into his hand, asked him if he knew me, and how he dared venture to talk to me as he had done. The poor man, resenting yet the blow I had given him, and burning with anger against me, told him the whole history of my life, from the time of my coming to Rome, to my leaving the Ambassador of Spain.