card-table the Marchesa Serafina disregards my call for trumps!  I rise up from my escritoire, where lie papers of State—­a threat from the King of Spain, declaration of war from the Emperor, a petition of right from some poor devil who has been shamefully used by one of my Ministers; I rise, I say, and leave them lying—­and for what?  To dangle at some faded opera, which I have heard a thousand times, behind the chair of some fine lady whose person I could possess (if I wanted it) for the writing of a billet.  Is it not incredible?  But there is more to come.  My future master, the Grand Prince, is more of a fool than I am, because he doesn’t know it.  Yet I read more consequence out of some petulant freak of his than from all the despair of a nation starving to death; and I know very well which would disturb my department the more effectually—­ whether it would be a revolution or his being late for Mass.  Is not this a humorous state of affairs?  Does not this tickle your sense of the ridiculous?  I assure you I have never regretted for a moment my having been involved in the business of the State.  I can laugh at myself day in and day out.”

The whimsicality of this kind of talk robbed it of its sting; but what is really curious about the count was that he was perfectly serious.

He gave the princes—­both him who reigned and him who hoped to reign—­ very bad characters, but said that for purposes of government he preferred a vicious to a bigoted fool.  The first, he said, will be ruled by minions, who can be paid.  This makes administration a simple matter of finance.  The second sort of princes are ruled by the frati, who pay themselves.  The distinction is material.  “The Grand Duke Cosimo,” he said on another occasion, “is living of fright.”  “Do you not mean dying of it?” I asked him.  “No,” said he, “he is living of it.  The frati have been at him for years; and now he is so terrified lest he may make a bad death that he has forgotten to die at all.  But, of course, his fears will wear out in time, and then he will perish like any ordinary man of sense.  As for my future master, Don Gastone, he will live just so long as his zest for iniquity endures.  When, like some Alexander of the stews, he has no more vices to conquer, he will die of ennui.  It is surprising how few are the changes you can ring upon the human appetite.  Gluttony, drunkenness—­”

“Spare me the catalogue, count,” I begged him.

“I was enumerating for my own convenience,” he said, “as I frequently do, to see if I cannot discover one new variety.  Don Gastone has not yet exhausted acquisition.  He has become a numismatist, and ploughed up a populous village the other day in the search for a penny of Charlemagne’s, supposed to have been dropped there in passing.  Then there is horticulture—­which is one of my own vices; and, of course, I do not forget piety; but things are not so bad as that just yet.  It is important that he should survive his father, because he is the last of the line of Medici, and I foresee troubles ahead.  We shall have an Austrian prince who will make soldiers of us, or a revolution, when our throats will be cut.  An unpleasant alternative—­to kill or be killed!” With these and similar reflections he now dazzled and now depressed, but always interested me.