The duty struck me as an amusing one, and I should have laughed with all my heart if I had felt the least desire to profit by the confidence he was pleased to place in me. Nevertheless I went up to the countess, whom I found sitting up in bed playing with Walpole. She read the letter, told me that she could not start till the day following, and informed me what time she would go, as if it had been all settled; but I smiled sardonically, and told her that my business kept me at the Hague, and that I could not possibly escort her. When Walpole heard me say this he offered to be my substitute, to which she agreed. They set out the day following, intending to lie at Leyden. Two days after their departure, I was sitting down to dinner with the usual company, increased by two Frenchmen who had just come. After the soup one of them said, coolly, “The famous Casanova is now in Holland.” “Is he?” said the other, “I shall be glad to see him, and ask for an explanation which he will not like.” I looked at the man, and feeling certain that I had never seen him before I began to get enraged; but I merely asked the fellow if he knew Casanova. “I’ll ought to know him,” said he, in that self-satisfied tone which is always so unpleasant. “Nay, sir, you are mistaken; I am Casanova.” Without losing his self-possession, he replied, insolently, “You are really very much mistaken if you think you are the only Casanova in the world.” It was a sharp answer, and put me in the wrong. I bit my lips and held my tongue, but I was grievously offended, and determined to make him find the Casanova who was in Holland, and from whom he was going to extract an unpleasant explanation, in myself. In the meanwhile I bore as well as I could the poor figure he must be cutting before the officers at table, who, after hearing the insolence of this young blockhead, might take me for a coward. He, the insolent fellow, had no scruple in abusing the triumph his answer had given him, and talked away in the random fashion. At last he forgot himself so far as to ask from what country I came. “I am a Venetian, sir,” I replied. “Ah! then you are a good friend to France, as your republic is under French protection.” At these words my ill-temper boiled over, and, in the tone of voice one uses to put down a puppy, I replied that the Republic of Venice was strong enough to do without the protection of France or of any other power, and that during the thirteen centuries of its existence it had had many friends and allies but no protectors. “Perhaps,” I ended, “you will reply by begging my pardon for not knowing that there was only one Venice in the world.”