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124 to his dislike for the profession that was being forced upon him.

For my part, I was making my preparations to leave Rome in order to go to Florence. When I mentioned my impending departure to the Marquise Aldobrandi, Don Ottavio, alleging some pretext or other, I have forgotten what, requested me to come up to his room. There taking me by my two hands:

"My dear friend," said he, "if you don't grant me the favor that I am about to ask of you I shall certainly blow my brains out, for I can see no other way of extricating myself from the difficulty that I am in. I am firmly resolved never to put on the hateful coat that they want to make me wear. It is my wish to fly this country. What I have to ask of you is that you will take me with you. You can pass me off as your servant; a single word added to your passport will suffice to facilitate my flight."

At first I tried to dissuade him from his project by speaking to him of the grief that he would cause his mother, but finding him inexorable in his determination I finally promised to take him with me and to have the necessary alterations made in my passport.

"That is not all," he said. "My departure is contingent also upon the success of an enterprise in which I am engaged. You intend to set out day after to-morrow; by that time I shall have been successful, may be, and then I am wholly at your service."

"You can't have been so mad," I asked him, not without uneasiness," as to have gone and got yourself entangled in some conspiracy?"

"No," he replied, "the interests at stake are of less importance than the fate of my country, but yet they