The Memoirs of Count Carlo Gozzi; Volume the First

by Carlo Gozzi

V.

I Fall Dangerously Ill; Recover; Form the only Intimate Acquaintance I made in Dalmatia.

When the new Regency had been established and the Court settled, I had but eight days to learn my duties as volunteer or adjutant[117] to his Excellency, as it is called there, before I fell ill of a fever which was declared to be malignant. Alone among people whom I hardly knew, at the commencement of my career, poorly provided with money, and lying in a wretched room, the windows of which were closed with torn and rotten paper instead of glass, I could not but compare my present destitution with the comforts of our home. Here I was battling with a mortal disease in solitude. There, at the least touch of illness, I enjoyed the tender solicitude of a sister or a servant at my pillow, to brush away the flies which settled on my forehead. Fortunately, I was not so strongly attached to life as to be rendered miserable by unavailing recollections and gloomy forebodings.

It happened one day, as I lay there burning, that a convict presented himself at the door of my miserable den, and asked me if I wanted anything which he could fetch me. He was one of those men who prowl around the officers' quarters, wrapped in an old blanket with a bit of rope about the waist, ready to do any dirty business and to pilfer if they find the opportunity. I gave him a few farthings and told him to send me a confessor—an errand very different from what he had expected. Before long a good Dominican appeared, who prepared me to die with the courage of an ancient Roman. Our modern sages may laugh at this plebeian wish of mine to make my peace with Heaven; but I have never been able to dissociate philosophy from religion. Satisfied to remain a little child before the mysteries of faith, I do not envy wise men in their disengagement from spiritual terrors.

The chief physician, Danieli, a man of prodigious corpulence and blackness, who had been sent to my assistance by the Governor, spared no attentions and no remedies. As usual, they proved unavailing; and he bade me prepare myself for death by receiving the holy sacrament. I summoned what remained to me of vital force, and went through this ceremony with devotion. There seemed to be so little difference between a sepulchre and the room in which my body lay, that I felt no disgust at relinquishing my corpse to the grave-diggers. I was now ready for the last unction, when an attack of hemorrhage from the nostrils, like those which had already nearly brought me to death's door, recalled me for the nonce to life. All the ordinary remedies—ligatures, powders, herbs, astringent plasters, sympathetic stones, muttered charms, old wives' talismans—were exhibited in vain. After filling two basons with blood, I lapsed into a profound swoon, which the doctor styled a syncope. To all appearances I was dead; but the blood stopped; in a quarter of an hour I revived; and three days afterwards I found myself, weak indeed, but wholly free from fever and on the road to recovery. My ignorance could not reconcile this salutary crisis with Danieli's absolute prohibition of blood-letting in my malady. But I suppose that a score of learned physicians, each of them upon a different system of hypotheses, conjectures, well-based calculations, and trains of lucid argument, would be able to demonstrate the phenomenon to their own satisfaction and to the illumination or confusion of my stupid brain. Stupendous indeed are the mental powers which Almighty God has bestowed on men!

The readers of these Memoirs will hardly need to be informed that my slender purse had nothing in it at the termination of this illness. Under these painful circumstances I found a cordial and open-hearted friend in Signor Innocenzio Massimo, nobleman of Padua, and captain of halbardiers at the Dalmatian Court. This excellent gentleman, of rare distinction for his mental parts, the quickness of his spirit, his courage, energy, and honour, was the only intimate friend whom I possessed during my three years' absence from home. When they were over, our friendship continued undiminished by lapse of time, distance, and the various vicissitudes of life. I have enjoyed it through thirty-five years, and am sure that it will never fail me. Some qualities of his character have exposed him to enmity; among these I may mention a particular sensitiveness to affronts, an intolerance of attempts to deceive him, and a quick perception of fraud, together with a firm resolve to stem the tide of extravagance and fashionable waste in his own family. His many virtues, the decent comfort of his household, his hospitality to friends and acquaintances, his careful provision for the well-being of his posterity, his benevolence to the poor and afflicted, his successful efforts as a peacemaker among discordant fellow-citizens, his expenditure of time and trouble upon all who come to him for advice or assistance, have not sufficed to disarm the malignity of a vulgar crowd, corrupted by the false philosophy of our century, which goes from bad to worse in dissolution and ill manners.

VI.
Short Studies in the Science of Fortification and Military Exercises.—Some Reflections which will pass for Foolishness.

On the restoration of my health, his Excellency placed me under Cavaliere Marchiori, Lieutenant-Colonel of Engineers, to learn mathematics as applied to fortification. This gentleman sent for me, and said that he had heard from my uncle of my aptitude for study, adding that the subject he proposed to teach me was of the greatest consequence to a soldier. I perceived at once that I was being treated on a different footing from the other volunteers, and that the studied forgetfulness of the Provveditore had been, as I suspected, a politic device to humble ambitious schemers. I thanked Signor Marchiori, and followed his instructions with pleasure, without however abandoning my own interest in literature.

He questioned me regarding my knowledge of arithmetic, which was only elementary; and when I saw that I must master it, in order to pursue the higher branch of study, I gave my whole head to the business. In the space of a month, I could cipher like a money-lender, and was ready to receive my master's teaching. My friend Massimo possessed a good collection of instruments for engineering draughtsmanship, and a library of French works on geometry, mathematics, and fortification, both of which he placed at my disposal. Signor Marchiori's lectures, long discussions with Signor Massimo, perusal of Euclid, Archimedes, and the French books, soon plunged me in the lore of points and lines and calculations. I burned with the enthusiasm, droll enough to my way of looking at the world, which inspires all students of this science. Yet I did not, like them, regard moral philosophy and humane literature as insignificant frivolities. I bore in mind for what good reasons the Emperor Vespasian dismissed the mathematicians who offered their assistance in the building of his Roman edifices. I knew that innumerable vessels, fabricated on the principles of science, have perished miserably in the tempests; that hundreds of fortresses, built by science, have been destroyed and captured by the same science; that inundations are continually sweeping away the dykes erected by science, to the ruin of thousands of families, and that the inundations themselves are attributable to the admired masterpieces of science bequeathed to us by former generations; that, in spite of science and her creative energy, the buildings she erects are not secured from earthquakes, conflagrations, and the thunderbolt. It remains to be seen whether Professor Toaldo's lightning-conductors will prove effectual against the last of these disasters. Then I reckoned up the blessings and curses which this vaunted science has conferred on humanity, arriving at the conclusion that the harm which she has done infinitely exceeds the good. I shuddered at the hundreds of thousands of human beings ingeniously massacred in war or drowned at sea by her devices; and took more pleasure in consulting my watch, her wise invention, for the dinner-hour than at the hour of keeping an appointment with my lawyer. Without denying the utility of sciences, I stuck resolutely to the opinion that moral philosophy is of more importance to the human race than mechanical inventions, and deplored the pernicious influence of modern Lyceums and Polytechnic schools upon the mind of Europe.

Signor Massimo and I kept house together in a little dwelling on the city walls, facing the sea. The sun, in his daily revolutions, struck this habitation on every side; and there was not an open space of wall or window-sill without its dial, fabricated by my skill, and adorned with appropriate but useless mottoes on the flight of time. A lieutenant named Giovanni Apergi, upright and pious, especially when the gout he had acquired in the world's pleasures made him turn his thoughts to Heaven, gave me friendly lessons in military drill. I soon learned to handle my musket, pike, and ensign; and sweated a shirt daily, fencing with Massimo, who was ferociously expert in that fiendish but gentlemanly art. We also spent some hours together over a great chessboard of his, covered with wooden soldiers, which we moved from square to square, forming squadrons, and studying the combinations which enable armies to kill with prodigality and to be killed with parsimony,—fitting ourselves, in short, for manuring cemeteries in the most approved style.

I was already half a soldier, and meant to make myself perfect in my profession; not, however, without a firm resolve to quit the army[118] at the expiration of my three years' service. Twelve months spent in studying my comrades convinced me that, though some worthy fellows might be found among them, their society as a whole was uncongenial to my tastes. I had neither the ambition nor the greed of gain which might have sapped this resolution; and my persistence during the appointed time was mainly due to a dislike of seeming fickle. I wanted to gain the respect of my relatives, whom I hoped to help one day with my counsel, my credit, and the example of my perseverance.

After eight months spent in the study of fortification, I lost my poor master. He died suddenly of a fit of spleen a few days after winning his company in a regiment called Lagarde. This promotion he obtained by competition; and some insulting words dropped upon the occasion, which he was unable to resent, caused his mortal illness. Every one deplored the death of Marchiori; but no one more than I did. His goodness, sweetness, affability, and friendly patience left a powerful impression on my memory. Gradually my interest in geometry declined, and I resumed my former studies with fresh ardour, attending meanwhile to my military duties, and waiting philosophically till the three years should be over.

VII.
This Chapter proves that Poetry is not as useless as people commonly imagine.

I am bound to confess that my weakness for poetry and Italian literature was great. In the Venetian service, and particularly in Dalmatia, there were very few indeed who shared these tastes. I wrote and read my compositions to myself, without seeking the applause of an audience or boring my neighbours with things they do not care for, as is the wont of most scribblers.

The secretary of the Generalate, Signor Giovanni Colombo, took some interest in literature. I may mention, by the way, that he afterwards rose to high dignity, which involved a calamity for him, sweetened, however, by a splendid funeral; in other words, he died Grand Chancellor of our most serene Republic.[119] This man, of gentle spirit and jovial temper, knowing the epidemic of poetry which possessed the Gozzi family, encouraged me to read him some of my trifles, and seemed to take pleasure in listening to them. He owned a small but well-chosen library, which he courteously allowed me to use. My verses, satirical for the most part and descriptive of characters—without scurrility indeed, though based on accurate observation of both sexes—were communicated to him and Massimo alone.

The town of Zara was bent on testifying its respect for our Provveditore Generale Quirini by a grand public display. A large hall of wood was accordingly erected on the open space before the fort, and hung with fine damask. Tickets of invitation were then distributed to various persons, who were to compose an Academy upon the day of the solemnity. Every academician had to recite two compositions in prose or verse, as he thought fit. The subjects were set forth on the tickets, and were as follows:—First, Is a prince who preserves, defends, and improves his dominions in peace, more praiseworthy than one who seeks to extend them by force of arms? The second was to be a panegyric of the Provveditore Generale. An old nobleman of Zara, named Giovanni Pellegrini, was chosen to preside in the Academy and to dispense the invitations. He wore a black velvet suit and a huge blonde wig, done up into knotted curls, and possessed a fund of eloquence in the style of Father Casimir Frescot.[120]

I did not receive an invitation, which proves either that I was an amateur of poetry unknown to fame, or that Signor Pellegrini, in his gravity and wisdom, judged me a mere boy, unworthy of consideration in an enterprise which he treated with true Illyrico-Italian seriousness. Signor Colombo and my friend Massimo urged me to prepare two compositions on the published themes; but I reminded them that I had no right to appear uninvited. Nevertheless, I amused myself by scribbling a couple of sonnets, which I consigned to the bottom of my pocket. As may be imagined, I defended peace in the one, and did my best to belaud his Excellency in the other.

The Provveditore Generale, attended by his officers and by the magnates of the city, entered the temporary hall, and took his seat upon a rich fauteuil raised many steps above the ground. A covey of literary celebrities, collected Heaven knows where, ranged their learned backs along a row of chairs, which formed a semicircle round him.

Strolling outside the damasked tabernacle, I saw some servants who were preparing beverages and refreshments with a mighty bustle. I was thirsty, and thought I should not be committing a crime if I asked one of them for a lemonade. He replied that express orders had been given not to quench the thirst of anybody who was not a member of the Academy. This discourteous rebuff, repeated to the sitio of several officers, raised a spirit of silent revolt among us. I resolved to put a bold face on the matter, and to proclaim myself an academician, thinking that the title of poet might win for me the lemonade which was denied to the dignity and the weapons of an officer.

This little incident confirmed my opinion of the usefulness of poetry against the universal judgment which regards it as an inutility. Poetry stood me in good stead by procuring me a lemonade and saving me from dying of thirst. Having swallowed the beverage, I proceeded to one of the seats in the assembly, exciting some surprise among its members, who were, however, kind enough to tolerate my presence. For three whole hours the air resounded with long inflated erudite orations and poems not remarkable for sweetness. A yawn from the General now and then did honour to the Academy and the academicians. I must in justice say that some tolerable compositions, superior to what I had expected, struck my ears. A young abbé in holy orders gushed with poetic eloquence. I have heard that he is now become a bishop. Who knows whether poetry was not as serviceable to him in the matter of his mitre, as she was to me in the matter of my lemonade!

I declaimed my sonnets in their turn; the second of which, by Apollo's blessing, pleased his Excellency, and consequently was received with general approval. It established my reputation among the folk of Zara, and led to a comic scene two days later. The Provveditore Generale was in the habit of riding in the cool some four or five miles outside the city; a troop of officers galloped at his heels, and I galloped with them. While we were amusing ourselves in this way, his Excellency took a fancy to hear my sonnet over again; for it had now become famous, as often happens with trifles, which go the round of society upon the strength of adventitious circumstances. He called me loudly. I put spurs to my horse, while he, still galloping, ordered me to recite. I do not think a sonnet was ever declaimed in like manner since the creation of the world. Galloping after the great man, and almost bursting my lungs in the effort to make myself heard, with all the trills, gasps, cadences, semitones, clippings of words, and dissonances, which the movement of a horse at full speed could occasion, I recited the sonnet in a storm of sobs and sighs, and blessed my stars when I had pumped out the fourteenth line. Knowing the temper of the General, who was haughty and formidable in matters of importance, but sometimes whimsical in his diversions, I thought at the time that he must have been seeking a motive for laughter. And indeed, I believe this was the case. Anyhow, he can only have been deceived if he hoped to laugh more at the affair than I did. Yet I was rather afraid of becoming a laughing-stock to my riding-companions also. Foolish fear! These honest fellows, like true courtiers, vied with each other in congratulating me upon the partiality of his Excellency and the honour he had done me. They were even jealous of a burlesque scene in which I played the buffoon, and sorry that they had not enjoyed the luck of performing it themselves.

VIII.
Confirmation of a hint I gave in the Second Chapter of these Memoirs relating to a great danger which I ran.

I related in the second chapter of this book that I once owed my life to a trick taught me by a jockey. The incident happened during one of our cavalcades with the Provveditore Generale.

At the hour appointed for riding out, all the officers of the Court sent their saddles and bridles to the General's stables, and each of us mounted the animal which happened to be harnessed with his own gear. Now the Bashaw of Bosnia had presented the governor with a certain Turkish stallion, finely made, but so vicious that no one liked to back the brute. One day I noticed that the grooms had saddled this untamable Turk for me. Who knows what motives determine the acts of stable-boys? I am not accustomed to be easily dismayed; besides, I had ridden many dangerous horses in my time, and this was not the minute to show the white feather before a crowd of soldiers. I leapt upon the animal like an antique paladin, without looking to see whether the bit and trappings were in order. Our troops started; but my Bucephalus reared, whirled round in the air, and bolted toward his stable, which lay below the ramparts. Pulling and working at the reins had no effect upon the brute; and when I bent down to discover the cause, I found that the bit had not been fastened, either through the negligence or the malice of the grooms.

Rushing at the mercy of this demon through the narrow streets and low doors of the city, I began to reflect that I was not likely to reach the stables with my head upon my shoulders. Then I remembered the jockey's advice, and rising in my stirrups, leaned forwards, and stuck my fingers into the two eyes of the stallion. Suddenly deprived of sight, and not knowing whither he was going, he dashed furiously up against a wall, and fell all of a heap beneath me. I leapt to earth with the agility of a practised rider, and made the Turk get up; he was trembling like a leaf, while I with shaky fingers fastened the bit firmly; then I mounted again, and rejoined my company among the shouts of applause which always greet dare-devil escapades of this kind. The middle finger of my left hand had been flayed by striking against the wall. I still bear the scar of this glorious wound.

IX.
Little incidents, trifling observations, moral reflections of no value, gossip which is sure to make the reader yawn.

Our forces had little to occupy them in those provinces, so that my sonnet in praise of peace exactly fitted. Some interesting incidents, and several journeys which I undertook, furnished me, however, with abundant matter for reflection. I shall here indulge myself by setting down a few observations which occur to my memory.

The regular troops which garrison the fortresses of Dalmatia had been recalled to Italy, in order to defend the neutrality of Venice during the wars which then prevailed among her neighbours. In these circumstances the Senate commissioned our Provveditore Generale to levy new forces from the subject tribes, not only for maintaining the military establishment of Dalmatia, but also for drafting a large number of Morlacchi[121] into Italy. It was a matter of no difficulty to enrol garrisons for the Illyrian fortresses; but the exportation of the Morlacchi cost his Excellency the greatest trouble. These ruffianly wild beasts, wholly destitute of education, are aware that they are subjects of Venice; yet their firm resolve is to indulge lawless instincts for robbery and murder as they list, refusing obedience in all things which do not suit their inclinations. To reason with them is the same as talking in a whisper to the deaf. They simply resisted the command to form themselves into a troop and leave their lairs for Italy.

Their chiefs, who were educated men, brave and loyal to their prince, strained every nerve to carry out these orders. It was found needful to recall the bandits, who swarm throughout those regions, outlawed for every sort of crime—robberies, homicides, arson, and such-like acts of heroism. Bribes too were offered of bounties and advanced pay, in order to induce the wild and stubborn peasants to cross the seas. I was present at the review of these Anthropophagi; for indeed they hardly merited a more civilised title. It took place on the beach of Zara under the eyes of the Provveditore, with ships under sail, ready for the embarkation of the conscripts. Pair by pair, they came up and received their stipend; upon which they expressed their joy by howling out some barbarous chant, and dancing off together with uncouth gambols to the transport ships. I revered God's handiwork in these savages while deploring their bad education, and felt a passing wish to explore the Eden of eternal beatitude in which the Morlacchi dwell.

It is certain that the Italian cities under our benign government were more disturbed than guarded by these brutal creatures. At Verona, in particular, they indulged their appetite for thieving, murdering, brawling, and defying discipline, without the least regard for orders. At the close of a few months, they had to be sent back to their caves, in order to deliver the Veneto from an unbearable incubus. Even at the outset, their spirit of insubordination let itself be felt. Scarcely had the transports sailed, when the sight of the Illyrian mountains made them burn to leap on shore. The seamen did their best to restrain the unruly crew; but finding that they ran a risk of being cut in pieces, they finally unbarred the pens before this indomitable flock of rams.

What I am now writing may seem to have little to do with the narrative of my own life, and may look as though I wished to calumniate the natives of Dalmatia. The rulers of those territories will, however, bear me out in the following remarks. I have visited all the fortresses, many districts, and many villages of the two provinces. In some of the cities I found well-educated people, trustworthy, cordial, and liberal in sentiment. In places far removed from the Provveditore Generale's Court the manners of the population are incredibly rough. All the peasants may be described as cruel, superstitious, and irrational wild beasts. In their marriages, their funerals, their games, they preserve the customs of pagan antiquity. Reading Homer and Virgil gives a perfect conception of the Morlacchi. They hire a troop of women to lament over their dead. These professional mourners shriek by turns, relieving one another when voice and throat have been exhausted by dismal wailings tuned to a music which inspires terror. One of their pastimes is to balance a heavy piece of marble on the lifted palm of the right hand, and hurl it after taking a running jump. The fellow who projects this missile in a straight line to the greatest distance, wins. One is reminded of the enormous boulders hurled by Diomede and Turnus.

In their mountain homes the Morlacchi are fine fellows, useful to the State of Venice on occasions of war with the Turks, their neighbours, whom they cordially detest. The inhabitants of the coast make bold seamen, apt for fighting on the waters. Toward Montenegro the tribes become even more like savages. Families, who have been accustomed for some generations to die peaceably in their beds or kennels, and cannot boast of a fair number of murdered ancestors, are looked down upon by the rest. On the beach outside the city walls of Budua, for which these men and brothers leave their hills in summer-time to taste the coolness of sea-breezes, I have witnessed their exploits with the musket and have seen three corpses stretched upon the sands. A member of one of the pacific families I have described, being taunted by some comrade, burned to wipe out the shame of his kindred, and opened a glorious chapter in their annals by slaughtering and being slaughtered. Fierce battles and armed encounters between village and village are frequent enough in those parts. The men of one village who kill a man of the next village, have no peace unless they pay a hundred sequins or discharge their debt by the death of one of their own folk. Such is the current tariff, fixed without consulting their sovereign, among these people, who regard brutality as justice. I learned much about these traits of human nature from a village priest of Montenegro, who conversed with me nearly every day upon the beach at Budua. He talked a strange Italian jargon, narrated the homicides of his flock with complacency, and let it be understood that a gun was better suited to his handling than the vessels of the sanctuary.

The thirst for vengeance is never slaked there. It passes from heir to heir like an estate in tail. Among the Morlacchi, who are less bloodthirsty than the Montenegrins, I once saw a woman of some fifty years fling herself at the feet of the Provveditore Generale, extract a mummied head from a game-bag, and cast it on the ground before him, weeping as though her heart would burst, and calling aloud for pity and justice. For thirty years she had preserved this skull, the skull of her mother, who had been murdered. The assassins had long ago been brought to justice, but their punishment was insufficient to lay the demon of ferocity in this affectionate daughter. Accordingly, she presented herself indefatigably through a course of thirty years before each of the successive Provveditori Generali, with the same maternal skull in her game-bag, with the same shrieks and tears and cries for justice.

I liked seeing the Montenegrin women. They clothe themselves in black woollen stuffs after a fashion which was certainly not invented by coquetry. Their hair is parted, and falls over their cheeks on either shoulder, thickly plastered with butter, so as to form a kind of large shiny bonnet. They bear the burden of the hard work of the field and household. The wives are little better than slaves of the men. They kneel and kiss the men's hands whenever they meet; and yet they seem to be contented with their lot. Perhaps it would not be amiss if some Montenegrins came to Italy and changed our fashions with regard to women; for ours are somewhat too marked in the contrary direction.

Climate renders both the men and women of those provinces extremely prone to sensuality. Legislators, recognising the impossibility of controlling lawless lust here, have fixed the fine for seduction of a girl with violence at a trifle above the sum which a libertine in Venice bestows on the purveyor of his venal pleasures. At the period of my residence in Dalmatia, the cities retained something of antique austerity. This did not, however, prevent the fair sex from conducting intrigues by stealth. It is possible that, since those days, enlightened and philosophical Italians, composing the courts of successive Provveditori Generali, may have removed the last obstacles of prejudice which gave a spice of danger to love-making.

In Dalmatia the women are handsome, inclining for the most part toward a masculine robustness; among the Morlacchi of the villages, a Pygmalion who chose to expend some bushels of sand in polishing the fair sex up, would obtain fine breathing statues for his pains. These women of Illyria are less constant in their love than those of Italy; but merit less blame for their infidelity than the latter. The Illyrian is blinded and constrained by her fervent temperament, by the climate, by poverty and credulity; the Italian errs through ambition, avarice, and caprice. I consider myself qualified for speaking with decision on these points, as will appear from the chapter I intend to write upon the love-adventures of my youth.

The land of those provinces is in great measure mountainous, stony, and barren. There are, however, large districts of plain which might be extremely fertile. Neither the sterile nor the fertile regions are under cultivation, but remain for the most part fallow and unfruitful. Onions and garlic constitute the favourite delicacies of the Morlacchi. The annual consumption of these vegetables is enormous; and it would not be difficult to raise a large supply of both at home. They insist, however, on importing them from Romagna; and when one takes the peasants to task for this sluggish indifference to their own interests, they reply that their ancestors never planted onions, and that they have no mind to change their customs. I often questioned educated inhabitants of those regions upon the indolence and sloth which prevail in rural Dalmatia. The answer I received was that nobody, without exposing his life to peril, could make the Morlacchi do more than they chose to do, or introduce the least reform into their agriculture. I observed that the proprietors might always import Italian labour and turn those fertile plains into a second Apulia. This remark was met with bursts of laughter; and when I asked the reason, my informants told me that many Dalmatian gentlemen had brought Italian peasants over, but that a few days after their arrival, they were found murdered in the fields, without the assassins having ever been detected. I perceived that my project was impracticable. Yet I wondered at my friends laughing rather than shedding tears, when they gave me these convincing answers.

It is a pity that Illyria and Dalmatia cannot be rendered fertile and profitable to the State. As it is, they cost our treasury more than they yield, through the expenses incidental to their forming our frontier against Turkey. But I never made it my business to meddle in affairs of public policy; and perhaps there are good reasons why these provinces should be left to their sterility. The opinion I have continually maintained and published, that we ought to begin by cultivating heads and hearts, has raised a swarm of hostile projectors against me. Such men take the truths of the gospel for biting satires, if they detect the least shadow of opposition to their views regarding personal interest, personal ambition, or particular prejudice. Yet the real miseries which I noticed in Dalmatia, the wretched pittance which proprietors draw from their estates, and the dishonesty of the peasants, suffice to demonstrate my principles of moral education beyond the possibility of contradiction.

During my three years in Dalmatia I used to eat superb game and magnificent fish for a mere nothing; often against my inclination, and only because the opportunity could not be neglected. When you are in want of something, you rarely find it there. The fishermen, who live upon the rocky islands,[122] ply their trade when it pleases them. They take no thought for fasts, and sell fish for the most part on days when flesh is eaten. The fish too is brought to market stuffed into sacks. I could multiply these observations; but let what I have already said suffice. It is my firm opinion that the economists of our century are at fault when they propose material improvements and indulge in visions of opulence and gain, without considering moral education. Wealth is now regarded by the indigent with eyes of envy and the passions of a pirate; rich people act as though they knew not what it was to possess wealth, and make a shameless abuse of it in practice. The one class need to learn temperance, moderation, and obedience to duty; the other ought to be trained to reason and subordination. The sages of the present day entertain very different views from these. In their eyes nothing but material interest has any value; and instead of deploring bad morals and manners, they seem to glory in them.

X.
I am enrolled in the Cavalry of the Republic.—What my military services amounted to.

Some fifteen months of my three years' service had elapsed, when the recall of our regular troops and the enrolment of fresh forces in Dalmatia, which have been described by me above, took place. I have now to mention that the Provveditore Generale chose this moment for placing me upon the roll of the Venetian service.

He had me inscribed as a cadet noble[123] of cavalry. Accordingly I blossomed out into a proper soldier at the age of about eighteen. Signor Giorgio Barbarigo, the paymaster,[124] a short, fat, honest fellow, informed me that my commission was registered, and that I was qualified to draw the salary of thirty-eight lire in good Venetian coin monthly at his office. The news surprised me, and I went at once to pay my acknowledgments to his Excellency.

He told me that, nearly all the regular troops having been recalled to Italy, he saw no prospect of awarding me a higher rank during the term of his administration, a considerable part of which had already elapsed. To this he added some ironical remarks to the following effect—"Although, indeed, I do not think you mean to follow a military career, having observed from many points in your behaviour that you are rather inclined to assume the clerical habit." I chose to interpret the irony of my chief to my advantage, and answered cheerfully that although I felt little inclination for the military profession, nothing would ever induce me to become an ecclesiastic; meanwhile I was glad to have studied human nature as one finds it in an army and in those provinces; above all things, I recognised the advantage of having been allowed to serve his Excellency during the three years of his office. I perceived that this reply had not been unacceptable, and retired after making the regulation bow.

I discharged my military duties with punctuality; and if my courage had been put to the test, I feel sure that I should have faced death with romantic enthusiasm. Yet I cannot boast of having earned my monthly pay by any particular services. In addition to the daily and nightly routine of discipline, I attended his Excellency upon visits of inspection by sea and land to the various fortified places of the territory. When the plague broke out, I spoiled my shirts and ruffles in fumigating the mass of correspondence which used to reach the Provveditore Generale from infected villages. I delivered sentences of arrest by word of mouth to Venetian patricians, noblemen, and officers—always much against the grain. I lay, together with several of my comrades, under arrest on a false charge of malpractice, and owed my liberation after a few hours to the intercession of a gentle lady of the Veniero family. While enumerating these martial deserts, I ought not perhaps to include the sufferings endured upon my journeys, whether riding the worst of nags under a fierce sun and sleeping in jackboots upon the open fields, or rocking at sea all night aboard some galley on a coil of cable, half devoured by myriads of bugs. Great as these sufferings were, I must admit that I endured greater in the disorderly garrison amusements which I joined of my own accord. Some account of these I intend to give in another chapter.

It will be observed that my services to the State were but slender. Yet many men have gained promotion or a pension on the strength of nothing better. And now I think upon it, I will mention one notable achievement, which, though it be not martial, might have put some other soldier laddie in the way of rising to his colonelcy. I hardly expect to be believed, but I am telling the truth, when I affirm that I acquired renown throughout Dalmatia as a soubrette in improvised comedy upon the boards of a theatre.

XI.
My theatrical talents; athletic exercises; imprudences of all kinds; dangers to which I exposed myself; with reflections which are always frivolous.

All through the carnival, tragedies, dramas and comedies used to be performed by amateurs in the Court-theatre, for the amusement of his Excellency, the patricians on the civil staff, officers of the garrison, and the good folk of Zara.[125]

Our troop was composed exclusively of male actors, as is the case in general with unprofessional theatres; and young men, dressed like women, played the female parts. I was selected to represent the soubrette.

On weighing the tastes of my audience, and taking into account the nation for whom I was to act, I invented a wholly new kind of character. I had myself dressed like a Dalmatian servant-girl, with hair divided at the temples, and done up with rose-coloured ribbands. My costume corresponded at all points to that of a coquettish housemaid of Sebenico. I discarded the Tuscan dialect, which is spoken by the soubrettes of our theatres in Italy, and having learned Illyrian pretty well by this time, I devised for my particular use a jargon of Venetian, altering the pronunciation and interspersing various Illyrian phrases. This produced a very humorous effect, and lent itself both in dialogue and improvised soliloquies to the expression of sentiments in keeping with my part. Courage and loquacity were always at my service; after studying the plot of a comedy, which had to be performed extempore, I never found my readiness of wit at fault. Accordingly, the new and unexpected type of the soubrette which I invented was welcomed with enthusiasm alike by Italians and natives. It created a furore in my audience, and won for me universal sympathy.

My sketches of Dalmatian manners studied from the life, my satirical repartees to the mistresses I served, my piquant sallies upon incidents which formed the talk of town and garrison, my ostentatious modesty, my snubs to impertinent admirers, my reflections and my lamentations, made the Provveditore Generale and the whole audience declare with tears of laughter running down their cheeks that I was the wittiest and most humourous soubrette who ever trod the boards of a theatre. They often bespoke improvised comedies, in order to enjoy the amusing chatter and Illyrico-Italian jargon of Luce; for I ought to add that I adopted this name, which is the same as our Lucia, instead of Smeraldina, Corallina, or Colombina.

Ladies in plenty were eager to know the young man who played Luce with such diablerie and ready wit upon the stage. But when they met him face to face in society, his reserve and taciturnity were so unlike the sprightliness of his assumed character, that they fairly lost their temper. Now that I am well stricken in years, I recognise that their disappointment was anything but a misfortune for me. The conduct of those few who concealed their feelings and pretended that my self-control and seriousness had charms to win their heart, justifies this moral reflection. Meanwhile my talent for comedy relieved me of all military duties so long as carnival lasted. Each year, at the commencement of this season, the Provveditore Generale sent for me, and affably requested me to devote my time and energy to his amusement in the Court-theatre.

During summer he set the fashion of pallone-playing, which had hitherto been unknown at Zara.[126] I had made myself an adept in this game at our Friulian country-seat. Accordingly his Excellency urged me to display my accomplishments for the entertainment of the public. In a short time my seductive costume of fine white linen, with a waistband of black satin and fluttering ribands, cut a prominent figure among the competitors in this noble sport. My turn for study, literary talent, grave demeanour, and seriousness of character made far less impression on the fair sex than my successes on the stage and the pallone-ground. It was these and these alone which put my chastity to the test and conquered it, as will appear in the chapter on my love-adventures. I might here indulge in a digression hardly flattering to women. But I prefer to congratulate them on their emancipation from the ideality of Petrarch's age. Now they are at liberty to float voluptuously on the tide of tender and electrical emotions, in company with youths congenial to their instincts, who have abandoned tedious studies for occupations hardly more exacting than a game at ball or the impersonation of a waiting-maid.

The truth of history compels me to touch upon some incidents which put my boyish courage to the proof; yet I must confess that my deeds of daring in Dalmatia were nothing better than mad and brainless acts of folly. While recording them, I dare hardly hope—although I should sincerely like to do so—that they will prove useful to parents by exposing the kind of life which young men lead on foreign service, or to sons by pointing out the errors of my ways.

We had no war on hand, and our valour was obliged to find a vent for itself. I should have passed for a poltroon if I had not joined the amusements and adventures of my comrades. These consisted for the most part in frantic gambling, serenading houses which returned our serenades with gunshots, entertaining women of the town at balls and supper-parties, brawling in the streets at night, disguising ourselves to frighten people, and breaking the slumbers of the good folk of the towns and fortresses where the Court happened to be fixed. I remember that one summer night in the city of Spalato, eight or ten of us dressed up for the latter purpose. Each man put on a couple of shirts, thrusting his legs through the sleeves of one and his arms through the other, with a big white bonnet on his head and a pole in his hand. Thus attired, we scoured the town like spectres from the other world, knocking at doors, uttering horrid shrieks to rouse the population, and striking terror into the breasts of women and children. Now it is the custom there to leave the stable-doors open, because of the great heat at night. Accordingly we undid the halters of some fifty horses, and drove them before us, clattering our staves upon the pavement. The din was infernal. Folk leaped from their beds, thinking that the Turks had made a raid upon the town, and crying from their windows: "Who the devil are you? Who goes there? Who goes there?" They screamed to the deaf, while we went clattering and driving on. In the morning the whole city was in an uproar, discussing last night's prodigy and skurrying about to catch the frightened animals.

My guitar-playing accomplishments made me indispensable in these dare-devil escapades of hair-brained boys, which by some miracle never seemed to reach the Provveditore Generale's ears. Had they done so, I suppose they would have been punished, as they deserved; for he was a man who knew how to maintain discipline. The Italians and Illyrians do not dwell together without a certain half-concealed antipathy. This leads to frequent trials of strength and valour, in which the Italians are most to blame. They insult the natives and pick quarrels with a people famous for their daring and ferocity. The courage displayed in maintaining these quarrels and facing their attendant dangers deserves the name of folly rather than of bravery. After stating this truth, to which indeed I was never blind, I dare affirm that no one met musket-shots and menaces with a bolder front than I did. Physicians versed in the anatomy of the human frame may be able to explain my constitutional imperturbability under all circumstances of peril. I am content to account for it as sheer stupidity.

We were at Budua, toward Montenegro, my friend Massimo and I. In this city women are guarded with a watchful jealousy of which Italians have no notion; while homicides occur with facility and frequency. Massimo began a gallant correspondence from the window of our lodging with a girl who was our neighbour. She belonged to one of the noblest families of the place, and was engaged to a gentleman of the city. Nevertheless, she returned my friend's advances with the eagerness of one who has been kept in slavery. I must add that the future bridegroom obtained some inkling of this aërial intrigue. He was a rough Illyrian of no breeding. One morning this fellow opened conversation with us officers in a little square, where we were seated together on stone benches. With much circumlocution and a kind of awkward sprightliness, addressing himself to Massimo, and smiling half-sourly and half-sillily, he expressed his own stupid contempt for Italian customs with regard to women. The long and the short of this involved discourse was simply that all the men in Italy were cuckolds, and all the women no better than they should be. Massimo took care not to emphasise the meaning of the fellow's innuendoes, which would have called for blood and vengeance; but contented himself with bluntly defending our social institutions. In the course of his argument he proved that the barbarity and tyranny of men toward women, who are always sharp of wit and full of cleverness in every climate, caused more of immorality and intrigue in Illyria than freedom of intercourse between the sexes caused in Italy. To my mind, he spoke what was partly true and partly false; for it cannot be maintained that the facilitation and toleration of licentiousness remove it from our midst. The Illyrian, however, lacked eloquence, and felt ill at ease in carrying on a wordy warfare. So he did not attempt to confute Massimo; but rolled his head and knit his brows, and told him that he might soon be taught at his own cost how badly the Italians conduct themselves in this respect.

Nothing more was wanted in the way of challenge to set us Italians on our mettle. A trifle of this sort turned us at once into knights-errant, championing our nation's cause among half-savages, who murder men with the same indifference as they kill quails or fig-peckers. Massimo turned to me and said that, when night fell, I must take my guitar and follow him. Obeying the rash romantic impulse of my heart, I replied that nothing should prevent me from attending on him. The other Italians who were present at this interview, with more prudence than ourselves, affected to hear nothing.

It happened that a young Florentine named Steffano Torri was at this time clerk in the secretary's office of the Generalato. He played female parts in our comedies and tragedies with much ability, and sang like a nightingale. In order to give our nocturnal enterprise the character of a serenade—a thing quite alien to the customs of that district—Massimo invited this poor lad to warble, without informing him of what, had happened. He was only too glad to let his fine voice be heard; and being besides an obliging creature, he gave his promise on the spot.

Night came. It was September; the season warm, and the moon shining brightly. We girt our swords, stuck a brace of pistols in our belts, and took up our station in the principal street, which was long and straight, beneath the windows of Massimo's Dulcinea. Torri sent melody after melody forth into the silent air, while I twanged my guitar-strings for a good hour's space. Suddenly a window, belonging to the mansion we were honouring with our duet, flew violently open. A great black head appeared, from which there issued a hoarse voice like that of Charon in Dante's Inferno. "What insolence!" it uttered with a bad Italian accent. We knew that the huge skull was consecrate, and belonged to a certain Canon, uncle of the girl. But something more was needed than the big bovine voice of an ecclesiastic to disturb our tranquillity. Torri, however, being a civilian and no soldier, began to be aware that his melodious airs were out of place. The prudence which is born of fear made him reflect upon the situation, and he asked leave to retire. We persuaded him to stay awhile, pointing out that the street was public, that our amusement was lawful and innocuous, and that it conferred an honour on our nation. He resumed his singing; but from this moment the melodies had a certain quaver in them, which the composer had not calculated. The first assault by the Canon was sustained and repulsed; for after roaring out "What insolence!" three or four times, he shut the window in our faces with a crash.

The second attack upon our obstinacy was something very different and far more formidable than a priest's voice, however horrible. It effectually shut the mouth up of our young musician. By the light of the moon we could discern six men at a distance entering the street with six lowered and gleaming muskets; the cowls of their cloaks concealed their faces, and they advanced at a slow pace toward us. At this apparition our musician took to his heels, and did not stop running till he reached his lodging. Massimo and I stood our ground like Orlando and Rodomonte. I went on playing; my friend, to keep the singing up, howled out some rustic ditties in a bold voice, which was however, I am bound to say, even less agreeable than the Canon's. His discords were enough to cast eternal shame upon Italian music; and if the young lady heard them, they must have frightened her out of her wits instead of giving her the pleasure of a serenade.

Observing our determination to stand firm, the six cowled men advanced to within twenty paces. We heard the click of their six gunlocks, as they cocked them, ready to give fire. At this point our intrepidity deserved no other name than madness; it called for the lancet, hellebore, strait-jackets, a good drubbing. Without budging an inch, we raised our pistols at the muffled band. They looked at us, we looked at them, for good two minutes. Then they made their minds up to defile past, leaving us at a little distance, but always keeping their eyes fixed with a haughty defiance on our faces. We, on our part, made our minds up to let them pass, returning no less haughty glances. Perhaps they wished to give us time for repentance, or for wholesome reflections, which should make us quit our post. Anyhow, they moved onward till they reached the end of the street, when once again they turned and faced us.

Little did those cowled and mantled fellows know the length and breadth of our stupidity! We recommenced our duet with a more hideous din than ever. They retraced their steps, and advanced steadily toward us. But when they found the pair of little fighting-cocks still standing with raised pistols on the watch, they judged it wiser to pursue their course and disappear. The removal of the Court from Budua, which took place one day after this memorable exploit, probably saved us from being shot down by an ambuscade. I also imagine that the men only wished to frighten us away. Possibly our expected departure from the city, or else respect for our staff-uniform, restrained their fingers on the trigger. Such considerations had certainly more weight with those fierce natives than the insane bravado of two insects armed with pistols. Anyhow, I have always regarded our courage in this danger as fool-hardiness rather than magnanimity.

I could relate an infinity of such adventures, in all of which we risked our lives on some puerile point of honour, or in pursuit of some impertinence which called for castigation. One night at Spalato our serenading party was welcomed with a storm of heavy stones, which made us skip like kids, but could not drive us from our post. We were paying this compliment to a handsome girl of Ragusa, the mistress of one of the chief nobles of the city, and we maintained our station for the honour of Italy, with skulls unbroken, till the day rose.

In the society of unemployed and lazy officers, a young man may be said to have worked miracles who preserves the good principles implanted in him at home. Unless he conforms to the tone and fashion of his comrades, he is sure to be derided and despised. If he does conform, he is likely to lose substance, health and reputation at cards, with women, or by drinking. Besides this, he constantly risks life and limb in the so-called pastimes I have just described.

I am able to boast without exaggeration that I never played for high stakes, that I never surrendered myself to debauchery, that I preserved the sound principles of my home education, and yet that I was popular with all my comrades, owing to the clubbable and fraternal attitude which I assumed at some risk, it is true, yet always with the firm determination to leave a good character behind me when my term of service ended.

XII.
Shows how a young Cadet of Cavalry is capable of executing a military stratagem.

Having described the dangers to which my system of conduct in the army exposed me, I ought in justice to myself to show that I was able on occasion to reconcile our absurd code of honour with prudence and diplomacy. With this object I will relate an incident, which is neither more nor less insignificant than the other events of my life.

The city of Zara is traversed by a main street of considerable length, extending from the piazza of San Simeone to the gate called Porta Marina. Several lanes and alleys, leading downwards from the ramparts on the side toward the sea, debouch into this principal artery. It so happened that some of the officers, wishing to traverse one of these lanes on their way to the promenade upon the ramparts, had been intercepted by a man muffled in a mantle, who levelled an eloquent enormous blunderbuss at their persons, and forced them to change their route. This act of violence ought to have been reported to the Provveditore Generale, and he would have speedily restored order and freedom of passage. Our military code of honour, however, forbade recourse to justice as an act of cowardice; albeit some of my comrades found it not derogatory to their courage to recoil before a blunderbuss.

My readers ought to be informed that a girl of the people, called Tonina, one of the loveliest women whom eyes of man have ever seen, lived in this lane. She had multitudes of admirers; and the cozening tricks she used to wheedle and entice a pack of simpletons, made her no better than any other cheap and venal beauty. Yet she contrived to sell her favours by the sequin. A gentleman, whom I shall mention lower down, was madly in love with this little baggage. Wishing to keep the treasure to himself, he adopted a truly Dalmatian mode of testifying his devotion, and stood sentinel in her alley. On two consecutive evenings the passage was barred; we talked of nothing else in the ante-chamber of the General, and laid plans how to reassert our honour. A number of officers agreed to face the blunderbuss; I received an invitation to join the band; and acting on my system of good-fellowship, I readily consented.

Our discussion took place in the ante-chamber; silence was enjoined; we settled that each of the conspirators should wear a white ribband on his hat, and that three hours after nightfall we should assemble under arms at our accustomed mustering-place. This was a billiard-saloon, whence we were to sally forth to the assault of Budua.

An Illyrian nobleman, Signor Simeone C——, of handsome person, honourable carriage, and a resolute temper, which inspired even soldiers with respect, although he held no military grade, was sitting in a corner of the ante-chamber, half-asleep, and apparently inattentive to our project. I knew him to be frank and genial, and he had often professed sentiments of sincere friendship for myself. After our scheme had been concerted, I passed into the reception-room of the palace. He followed, and opened a conversation on indifferent topics, in the course of which he drew me aside, changed his tone, and began to speak as follows:—

"The moment has arrived for me to testify the cordial friendship which I entertain for you. I regret that you have promised to join those fire-eaters this evening. On your honour and secrecy I know that I can count. I am sure that you will not reveal what I am about to disclose; else the higher powers, whom we are bound to regard, might be involved, and cowardice might be suspected in those whose courage is indisputable. This preamble will enable you to judge what I think of you, and to measure the extent of my friendship. I am the man in the mask. To-night there will be four blunderbusses in the alley. I shall lose my life; but several will lose theirs before the lane is forced. I am sorry that you are in the affair. Contrive to get out of your engagement. Let the rest come, and enjoy their fill of pastime at the cost of life or limb."

This blunderbuss of an oration took me by surprise. But I did not lose my senses or my tongue, and answered to the following effect:—

"I am amazed that you should have begun by professing friendship and preaching caution. You do not seem to understand the first elements of the one or the simple meaning of the other. I am obliged to you for one thing only, your belief that I am incapable of divulging what you have just told me. Upon this point alone your discernment is not at fault. I would rather die than expose you. Yet you want me, under threats, to break my word, and to render myself contemptible in the eyes of all my comrades. This you call a proof of friendship. It is as clear as day, too, that you have yielded to a hussy's importunities, risking your own life and the lives of your friends upon a silly point of honour in a shameful quarrel. This is the proof of your prudence. If you withdraw from the engagement, no harm will be done, and cowardice will only be imputed to a nameless mask. But if I break my word, you cannot free me from the imputation of having proved myself a renegade and a dastard. I shall become an object of scorn and abhorrence to the whole army. If I act as you desire, my oath of secrecy to you will violate the laws of friendship, prudence, everything which men hold sacred. Your promise of secrecy again puts my honour in peril. How can you be sure that one of your accomplices will not privily inform his Excellency of your name and your mad enterprise? Where shall I then be? No: it is clearly your duty to obey the counsels dictated by my loyal friendship and my sound prudence. Leave the alley open; and then you will in truth oblige me. Make love to your Tonina with something more to the purpose than a blunderbuss. Her physical shape excuses your weakness for her; her mind deserves your scorn; but I am not going to preach sermons on objects worthy or unworthy of love; I feel compassion for human frailty."

It was obvious that Signor Simeone C—— felt the force of these arguments. But he writhed with rage under them, and showed no sign of consenting. In his fierce Dalmatian way he burst into bare protestations, swore that he would never quit the field, and wound up with a vow to sell his life as dearly as man ever did.

At this point I judged it needful to administer a dose of histrionic artifice. After gazing at him for some seconds with eyes which spoke volumes, I assumed the declamatory tone of a tragedian, and exclaimed: "Well then, I promise to be the first to enter the lane this evening, and, without attacking you, I shall offer my breast to your fire. I have only this way left of proving to you that you are in no real sense of the word my friend." Then I turned my back with a show of passion, taking care, however, to retire at a slow pace. Except for the ferocity instilled by education, he was at bottom an excellent good-hearted fellow. Seizing me by the arm, he begged me wait a moment. I saw that he was touched, and maintaining the tragic tone, I persuaded him to leave the access to the alley free, without resigning his exclusive right to the Tonina. For my part, I undertook never to reveal our secret. This promise I have kept for thirty-five years. Lapse of time and the probability of his decease—for he was much older than I—excuse me for now breaking it.

On three following nights I joined the allied forces at the billiard-room, armed to the teeth, and with a white ribbon flying from my hat-band. I was always the first to brave the blunderbusses, being sure that no resistance would be offered. Indeed, the victory, on which we piqued ourselves, had been won beforehand in my battle of words. The culpable conduct of Tonina, a girl of the people, who had exposed so many gentlemen to serious danger, remained fixed in my mind. I shall relate the sequel to this incident, which took a comic turn, in the next chapter. For the present, it is enough to add that Signer Simeone C——'s infatuation for this corsair of Venus rapidly declined, as is the wont of passions begotten by masculine appetite and feminine avarice. Tonina, however, did not lack lovers, and the badness of her nature continued to spread discord and foment disorder in our circle.

XIII.
The fair Tonina is rudely rebuked by me upon an accidental occasion in the theatre.—My reconciliation with the young woman.—Reflections on my life in Dalmatia.

One evening during the last carnival of my three years' service, the Provveditore Generale bespoke an improvised comedy at the Court-theatre. The officers arranged a supper-party and a ball in private rooms, intending to pass the night gaily when the farce was over. I had to play the part of Luce, married to Pantalone, a vicious old man, broken in health and fortune. I was reduced to extreme poverty, with a daughter in the cradle, the fruit of my unhappy marriage.

There was a night-scene, in which I had to soliloquise, while rocking my child and singing it to sleep with some old ditty. This lullaby I interrupted from time to time with the narrative of my misfortunes and with sallies which made the audience die of laughter. Bursts of applause brought the house down as I told my story, enlarged upon my reasons for marrying an old man, related the incidents of my life, alluded in modest monosyllables to what I had to bear, described what a fine figure of a woman I had been, and what a scarecrow matrimony had made me. I complained of cold, hunger, evil treatment. I did not make milk enough to suckle my baby; and what I made was sour, nay, venomous from fits of rage and all the sufferings I had to go through. This bad milk gave my darling, the fruit of my womb, the stomach-ache. It kept bleating all night like a lamb, and would not let me close an eye. The night was far advanced. I was waiting for my old fool of a husband. What could be keeping him abroad? He must surely be in the Calle del Pozzetto, notorious at Zara for its evil fame. I had a presentiment of coming troubles, moralised upon the woes of life, and burst into a flood of tears, which made everybody laugh. The truth was that one of our officers, Signor Antonio Zeno, who played the part of Pantalone excellently, had not turned up at the proper time to enter into dialogue with me. Until he arrived, I was forced to continue my soliloquy, which had already occupied the attention of the audience full fifteen minutes. A good extempore actor ought never to lose presence of mind, or to be at a loss for material. In order to prolong the scene, I pretended that my baby was crying, and that it would not go to sleep for all my lullabies and cradle-rocking. In a fit of impatience I took it up, unlaced my dress, and laid it with endearing caresses to my breasts to quiet it. This fresh absurdity, together with my lamentations over the non-existent teats I said the greedy little thing was biting, kept my audience in good-humour. From time to time I turned my eyes to the sides, being really disturbed at Signor Zeno-Pantalone's non-appearance, and racking my brains in vain for some new matter to sustain the soliloquy.

Just then I happened to catch sight of Tonina seated in one of the front boxes of the theatre, resplendent with beauty, and attired in a gala dress which cast a glaring light upon her dubious career. She was laughing with more assurance and sense of fun than anybody at my jokes. The catastrophe which she had nearly caused flashed suddenly across my mind. I felt that I had discovered a treasure; and plunged like lightning into a new subject. What I proceeded to do was bold, I admit, yet quite within the limits of good taste upon our amateur stage, where personal allusions were allowed perhaps a little too liberally. I called my doll-baby by the name of Tonina, and addressed my speech to it. I caressed it, admired its features, flattered my maternal heart with the hope that Tonina would grow up a lovely girl. So far as I was concerned. I vowed to give her a good education, by example, precepts, chastisement, and watchful care. Then, taking a tone of gravity, I warned her that if, in spite of all my trouble, she fell into such and such faults, such and such acts of imprudence, such and such immoral ways, and caused such and such disturbances, she would be the worst Tonina in the world, and I prayed God to cut her days short rather in the cradle. All the evil things I mentioned were faithfully copied from anecdotes about Tonina in the front box, with which my audience were only too well acquainted.

Never in my whole life have I known an improvised soliloquy to be so tumultuously applauded as this of mine was. The spectators at one point of the speech turned their faces with a simultaneous movement towards Tonina in her gala dress, clapping their hands and laughing till the theatre rang again. His Excellency, who had some inkling of the siren's ways, honoured my unexpected satire with explosions of unconcealed merriment. Tonina backed out of her box in a fit of fury, and escaped from the theatre, cursing my soliloquy and the man who made it. Pantalone finally arrived, and the comedy ended without any episode more mirthful than the scene between me and my baby.

Do not imagine that I have related this incident to brag about it. Although the young woman in question was a girl of the people, whose dissolute behaviour and ill-nature had been the cause of many misadventures, and though the Provveditore Generale applauded my performance, I blamed myself, when it was over, for yielding to a mere impulse of vanity, and exhibiting my power as a comedian at the cost of committing an act of imprudence and indiscretion. Much has to be condoned to youth which is never conceded to maturity.

I have mentioned that a ball and supper-party had been arranged by us officers after the play, and that I was a member of the company. I went in my costume of Luce, partly to save time, and partly to carry on the joke. Tonina was among the guests. She did not expect me, and was sitting in a corner, angry and out of spirits. When she saw me, one would have thought she had set eyes on the fiend; she looked as though she meant to leave the room. I took her hand, and protested I would rather go than that the company should lose its loveliest ornament. I vowed that she was adorably beautiful, and that it was a pity she was not equally good. I begged her in gentle terms to take the accident of the evening into account, to reflect upon the universal verdict given by the audience on her ways of life, and to guard against the private flatterers who blinded her to the truth. I told her that God had meant to send in her an angel, and not a devil into this world. I interwove so many praises with so many insolences, and with such complete frankness, that she could not but laugh. Everybody laughed, down to her very lovers. She expressed a wish to dance with me. I accepted the invitation. This looked like a token of peace; but it was only treachery. While dancing, she exerted all the charms, enticements, captivating humours, pressures of the hand, and so forth, which her bad vindictive and seductive nature could suggest to enslave me.

A woman's coquetries directed to some purpose of revenge are always blind, and give the best advantage to a clever roué. The reason is that the woman, piqued to the point of seeking a victory at any price, lowers herself to the utmost, without being aware of what she is conceding. I was not a roué; and woe to me if I had let myself be snared by the wiles and artifices of that viper smarting under the sense of recent insult!

Our pleasure party was resumed soon after supper, during which my fair foe kept me at her side. We broke up about sunrise; and Tonina never ceased to call me her accursed little devil; that was the sweet Dalmatian term of endearment which she used. Compelled by these compliments, I promised to pay her a visit, but I did not keep my word.

I have now given some general notion of my ways of thinking and acting, my character and conduct, up to the age of eighteen on to twenty. Nothing but the truth has dictated these reminiscences, from which I have undoubtedly omitted many things of similar importance. I am sure that if I had been guilty of anything really wrong during this period, it would not have escaped either my memory or my pen. I have never hardened my heart against the stings of remorse, and I would far rather frankly record facts to my discredit than bear the stings of conscience by suppressing what is true. Reviewing the veracious picture of myself which I have painted, friends will see in me a somewhat eccentric young man, but of harmless disposition; enemies will take me for a worthless scapegrace; the indifferent, who know me superficially by sight, will discover some one very different from their conception based on my external qualities. At the proper place and time I shall account for this not unreasonable and yet fallacious conception formed of me by strangers. The reasons will appear clearly in the detailed portrait I intend to execute of myself, and which will surpass the best work of any painter.

XIV.
The end of my three years' service.—I cast up my accounts, and reckon debts; calculate upon the future, with a sad prevision of the truth.—My arrival in my home at Venice.

The three years of my military service were nearly at an end, when I contracted a slow fever, not dangerous to life, but tedious. The time had come for settling accounts, and seeing how I stood. My family, since I left home, had furnished me with only two bills of exchange, one for fourteen, the other for six sequins. My useless duties to the State had brought me thirty-eight lire per month. Against these receipts I balanced my expenses: so much for my daily food; so much for my lodging, clothing, and washing; so much for a servant, indispensable in my position; so much for two illnesses, together with the small sums spent on unavoidable pleasures of society. The result was that I found myself in debt to my friend Massimo for exactly the sum of fifty-six sequins and sixteen lire, or 200 ducats.[127]

If the necessities of life are not to be considered vices, this debt was certainly a modest one. Still it weighed upon my mind. I consoled myself by recalling my friend's nobleness of nature, and felt sure that I should be able to repay him on reaching home. I computed that the gross sum I had received during those three years amounted to 480 ducats; and I did not think I had been a spendthrift in consuming about 150 ducats a year on my total expenditure. I could indeed have saved something by attending the table which the Provveditore Generale kept daily for the officers of his Court and guard, but which his sublime Excellency never honoured with his presence. Little did he know what a gang of ruffians, with the exception of a few patient souls constrained by urgent need, defiled his table, or what low tricks were perpetrated at it. Since the day of my arrival I had heard the infamous and compromising talk which went on there, had watched the squabbles between guest and guest, and guests and serving-men, had seen the cups and platters flying through the air—and, like a naughty boy perhaps, I preferred to contract a debt of 200 ducats rather than accept a hospitality so prostituted to vile uses. I attended this table of Thyestes, as it seemed to me, only when I could not help it, on the days when I had to mount guard.

The financial statement I have just made will appear to many of my readers a mere trifle, unworthy of recording here. They are mistaken. When they have learned in what a state of desolation I found my father's house, and how I strove to stem the tide of prodigality and waste which was bringing our family to ruin, they will understand my reasons for insisting on these trifles. Heads heated by anger and resentment are only too ready to invent false accusations; and I shall soon be made to appear a prodigal, a reckless gambler, a consumer of the substance of my family during the three years I spent abroad. This is why I am so scrupulous in telling the plain truth about my cost of living in Dalmatia. I have never been ashamed of letting the whole world know how modest are my fortunes. I should think it a greater shame to pretend to possess more than I really own. Riches have always seemed to me to be a name, and to reside in the imagination. If I cast my eyes on a carpenter, then raise them to a duke, and finally lift them to a king, I obtain convincing demonstration of the fact that he alone is rich who has the mental wealth—to be contented with his lot. Alas! that only I and many millions upon their deathbed recognise this truth.

My three years were over. The new Provveditore Generale, Jacopo Boldù, arrived in Dalmatia, and received the staff of office with the usual formalities from his Excellency Quirini. In my moments of leisure I had composed several poems in honour of the latter, and had procured others from Venice. These I copied out in the beautiful handwriting which I then possessed, sewed them together, added a respectful dedication, and had them bound in a fine velvet cover. Then I paid my respects to his Excellency in company with my friend Massimo, and laid my literary tribute at his feet. I was no Virgil, nor was I born in the golden age of Augustus. Only my fanaticism for the art of poetry made me imagine that verses could be anything worth offering as a gift.

The Cavaliere accepted my donation with affability. He said: "I thank you. At least I have the wherewithal to show that, while a member of my Court, you have remained at school."

Afterwards I learned that he made a present of this book to the Very Eminent Cardinal, his uncle, Bishop of Brescia. His Excellency inquired whether I preferred to return to Venice or to stay in Dalmatia, occupying the post of cadet noble of cavalry on my promotion. I begged him to take me in his train to Venice, and he graciously accepted.

Some one else than I would have looked around for testimonials little to be trusted, which might have kept me fraudulently drawing pay upon the muster-roll of Venice from a too indulgent Government. But I had renounced the military career, and had no mind to spunge upon the public treasury. Our Prince I regarded as a common father, but did not think it just to saddle him with thievish sons, each one of whom by coaxed protections, adulations, hypocrisies, and the vilest offices, eats into the common patrimony of the nation, which ought to be reserved for urgent needs. I was a poor lad, with a debt of 200 ducats; but I knew that the services rendered to the State by me constituted no claim upon the public purse. If I was poor, this came from our being too many in our family and from the maladministration of our property.

My wants were moderate. I flattered myself that I could satisfy them by attending to the management of the estate; and I felt sure that my father, paralysed and speechless as he was, would never refuse to pay the trifling debt I had contracted. Meanwhile it is not improbable that my name remained upon the muster-roll long after I left Dalmatia. Somebody may have pocketed my pay and pilfered from the treasury to this extent. I was not responsible for this, and had no right to inquire into the matter, since I never asked to be cashiered in form. Poor I was, poor I am, and poor I expect to die. At any rate, I am sure that I should die in desperation if I felt on my deathbed that I had earned a fortune by deceit, injustice, and intrigue.

It was in the month of October when at last I embarked for Venice on the galley of his Excellency. Wind and weather were against us. After a painful voyage of twenty-two days, we came in sight of home, and I drew breath again. After paying my respects and returning thanks to the Cavaliere who had brought me back, I set off for our ancestral mansion at San Cassiano, accompanied by Signor Massimo, whom I had invited to stay with me upon his way to Padua. There I hoped to be able to pay my friend some attention by giving him good quarters during his sojourn in Venice.

XV.
Disagreeable discoveries relating to our family affairs, which dissipate all illusions I may have formed.

Leaving the horrors of the galley for the ancient home of my ancestors, I palpitated between pleasure at escaping into freedom, hope of being able to make my friend comfortable, and uneasiness lest this hope might prove ill-founded.

We reached the entrance, and my companion gazed with wonder at the stately structure of the mansion, which has really all the appearance of a palace. As a connoisseur of architecture, he complimented me upon its fine design. I answered, what indeed he was about to discover by experience, that attractive exteriors sometimes mask discomfort and annoyance. He had plenty of time to admire the façade, while I kept knocking loudly at the house-door. I might as well have knocked at the portal of a sepulchre. At last a woman, named Eugenia, the guardian-angel of this wilderness, ran to open. To my inquiries she answered, yawning, that the family were in Friuli, but that my brother Gasparo was momently expected. Our luggage had now been brought from the boat, and we began to ascend a handsome marble staircase. No one could have expected that this fine flight of steps would lead to squalor and the haunts of indigence. Yet on surmounting the last stair this was what revealed itself. The stone floors were worn into holes and fissures, which spread in all directions like a cancer. The broken window panes let blasts from every point of the compass play freely to and fro within the draughty chambers. The hangings on the walls were ragged, smirched with smoke and dust, fluttering in tatters. Not a piece remained of that fine gallery of pictures which my grandfather had bequeathed as heirlooms to the family. I only saw some portraits of my ancestors by Titian and Tintoretto still staring from their ancient frames. I gazed at them; they gazed at me; they wore a look of sadness and amazement, as though inquiring how the wealth which they had gathered for their offspring had been dissipated.

I have hitherto omitted to mention that our family archives contain an old worm-eaten manuscript, in which are registered the tenths[128] paid to the public treasury. From this document it appears that the father of my great-grandfather was taxed on upwards of ten thousand ducats of income. It is perhaps a folly to moralise on such things; yet the recollection of those mournful portraits gazing down upon me in the squalor of our ancient habitation prompts me to tell an idle truth. Nobody will be the wiser for it; certainly none of our posterity in this prodigal age. My grandfather left an only son and a good estate settled in tail on heirs-male in perpetuity. Four excellent residences, all of them well-furnished, one in Venice, another in Padua, another in Pordenone, another in the Friulian country-town of Vicinate, were included in this entail, as appears from his last will and testament. Little did he think that the solemn appointments of the dead would be so lightly binding on the living.

I had informed my friend Massimo of the exact state of our affairs at home, so far as these were known to me. I could not acquaint him with the grave disasters which had happened in my three years' absence, being myself in blessed ignorance as yet. The news that my two elder sisters had been married inclined me to expect that our domestic circumstances were improving. Cruel deception wrapped me round, and a hundred speechless but eloquent mouths were now proclaiming, from the walls and chambers of my home, how utterly deceived I had been.

Before long I broke, as usual, into laughter, and gaily begged my comrade's pardon for bringing him to such a wretched hostelry. I assured him that my heart, at any rate, was not so ruined as my dwelling, and engaged him in conversation, while we roamed around its chambers, every nook of which increased my mirth by some new aspect of dilapidation. Then I bade him refresh his spirits with a survey of the noble façade; till at last we settled down as well as circumstances permitted. Two days afterwards, my brother Gasparo arrived. I presented the stranger I had brought to share our hospitality, frankly expressing my sense of his worth and my obligations to him as a friend. Upon this we established ourselves in a little society of three, enlivened by the conversation of my brother, who, even with a fever on him, never failed to be witty.

Gasparo and I were anxiously awaiting an opportunity to talk alone like brothers after my long absence. When the moment came, I inquired after my poor father, our mother, and the circumstances of the family. What I had already seen on my arrival prepared me for the disagreeable news I had to hear. With his usual philosophy, but not without an occasional sign of painful emotion, he gave me the following details. The family was reduced to really tragic straits. Our father lived on, but speechless and paralytic, in the same state as when I left him. My two elder sisters, Marina and Giulia, were married respectively to the Conte Michele di Prata and the Conte Giovan-Daniele di Montereale. About ten thousand ducats had been promised for their dowries. To raise this sum, such and such portions of the estate had been sold, and a debt of more than two thousand ducats had been contracted. A lawsuit was pending between the family and the Conte Montereale concerning part of the dowry still due to him. Our other three sisters, Laura, Girolama, and Chiara, were growing into womanhood, and gave much to think of for their future.

I saw, to my great annoyance, that it would be impossible to liquidate my debt upon the spot. But all these terrifying details did not make me regret my resignation of the post of cadet noble in the cavalry. A few days later, Signor Massimo left for Padua, with the assurance that his two hundred ducats would be paid in course of time by me. Upon this matter he only expressed the sentiments of cordial friendship.

It was not too late in the season for a visit to the country. I felt a strong desire to reach Friuli, and to kiss the hands of my unhappy father. Thither then I went, together with my brother, armed with a giant's fortitude, which was not long in being put to proof.

XVI.
Fresh discoveries regarding the condition of our family.—Vain hopes and wasted will to be of use.—I abandon myself to my old literary studies.

Our country-house had been originally constructed on an old-fashioned, roomy, and convenient scale, with numbers of out-buildings. It was now reduced to one of those dilapidated farms, which I have described in my burlesque poem La Marfisa Bizzarra, canto xii., stanza 126.[129] Two-thirds of the edifice had been demolished, and the materials sold. The remaining fragments were inhabited, but bore written on their front: "Here once was Troy."

Prepared as I was by the misery of our town-house for the desolation of this rural mansion, I hardly cared to cast a glance upon it. What I noticed on arriving was a certain air of jollity and gladness, breathing health, betokening contentment, which all the faces of the village people wore. Amid the jubilations of relatives, guests, serving-folk and lads about the farm, not omitting a pack of barking dogs, I descended from the calèche with my brother. A whole crowd of people, whom I did not know and could not number, fell upon my neck to bid me welcome. Something of a military carriage, which I had picked up abroad, but which had no relation to my real self, made our farm-folk stare upon me like a comet.

Then I raised my eyes, and saw my poor father at a window in the upper storey, with trembling limbs, dragging himself forward on his stick to catch a glimpse of me. All the blood turned suddenly and galloped through my veins. I rushed up the stairs, burst into the room where he was standing, seized one of his hands, and kissed it in a transport of filial affection. He fell upon my shoulder, more paralytic than he had been when I last embraced him, and, in his inability to speak, broke into a piteous fit of weeping. The effort I made to restrain my own tears, lest they should add to his unhappiness, made me feel as though my lungs would burst. Leaning on my arm, he slowly tottered after me, and little by little we reached another room which he frequented. October was nearly over, and the cold in that Friulian climate was very sensible. A good fire burned on the hearth, near which stood the arm-chair of my father, who for seven years had dragged his life out in this wretched state. All the resources of medical science had been tried in vain. Physicians sometimes agreed and sometimes differed about his treatment. But their concord and their discord were equally impotent to effect a cure; and he had not yet reached the age of fifty-five.

I found my mother in the same apartment. She uttered sentiments which were not inappropriate to her maternal character, but in a frigid tone and with an air of stately self-control. I always loved and respected her, not merely from a sense of duty, but with a true filial instinct. She, on her side, used frequently to protest when there was no need for protestation, that she loved all her nine children with exactly the same amount of affection. She often repeated the following words with gravity, raising her eyebrows as she spoke: "Cut off one of my fingers and I suffer pain; cut off a second and I suffer;" and so on through nine fingers, amputated by the same figure of speech, with equal agony in each case. Notwithstanding this, I believe that the loss of eight fingers would not have given her the same pain as that of the first-born finger, in other words, of my brother Gasparo. He is still alive, a man of honour, and a sage if ever sage existed; and I feel sure that he would admit the truth of this statement, if called on to confirm it.

In my long and anxious study of human nature, I have seen so many mothers with the weakness of my own, that I never dreamed of blaming her. It seemed right to me that my brother's mental gifts and noble qualities should earn for him more of her love than she bestowed on all her other eight children. Mothers, however, who are so devoted to a son generally spoil him, notably by extolling what is good in his character, but also by defending his natural frailties. Acting thus, my mother favoured Gasparo's marriage, which subjected her beloved son to a real martyrdom. Her lifelong devotion to him, and the prejudice displayed in his favour by her will, only served to increase the unhappiness of a man whom I always loved, loved still, and shall love as friend and brother till the end of my days on earth. This digression was rendered necessary by what will follow in my Memoirs.

The room was soon full of relatives and intimate friends, all curious about me. My father strove to ply me with questions, but his tongue refused its office, and he relapsed into weeping. Sad at heart as I was for him, I contrived to relate the most amusing anecdotes I could remember concerning my life in Dalmatia and my travels. In this way I kept him laughing, together with the whole company, through the rest of that day.

The perfect country air; a table abundantly served with rural dainties, though somewhat deficient in elegance; the joviality, wit, and pleasant sallies which never failed in our domestic circle,—all this prevented me from attending to the defects of our establishment. Next day I began to discover that the real cause of trouble was not in the building, but in the minds of its inhabitants. I could not have explained why, but I seemed to be a person of importance in the eyes of everybody. My three sisters confided to me in secret that my brother Gasparo's wife, in close alliance with my mother, who doted on her as the consort of her favoured first-born, ruled all the affairs of the family, which were rapidly going from bad to worse. My father's authority as head of the house had ceased to be more than a mere instrument for carrying out what my sister-in-law advised and my mother sanctioned. Unless I managed to stem the tide of extravagance, we should all be plunged into an abyss of ruin. One of my sisters, Girolama, a girl devoted to reading, writing, and translating from the French—for she too was bitten with our family cacoethes—spoke like a sibyl, gravely and eloquently, on these painful topics. At the same time, my brother's wife contrived secret interviews, in which she explained to me that her husband was indolent, torpid, drowned in fruitless studies, devoted to the company of a certain clever person, and wholly averse from thoughts or cares about domestic matters. She had done everything in her power—God knew she had. She would go on doing her best—God should see she would. Then she described her plans and projects, which, to tell the truth, were pure poetical stupidities. She vowed that she was not in any sense the mistress of the establishment, the administrator of the estate, or the disposer of its revenues; she merely gave advice, made suggestions, and exerted herself for the common benefit and to supply the needs of the family in general. She exhorted me to speak seriously to her husband; I was to make him abandon his unprofitable studies, make him, above all things, give up those visits of taste and soul, which did so much harm; in fine, I was to force him to sustain his wife in her stupendous labours, and to concentrate his thoughts upon his children, who were five in number.

When I came to analyse the curious compound of truths, lies, and fancies which issued from the fevered brains of this poor lady—always hard at work, always embarrassed in a labyrinth of business—I seemed to perceive that what moved her most was the fear of being made herself responsible for our financial failure. It was also clear that her original ambition of acting the part of prime minister in a realm which only existed in her own imagination, kept her always on the stretch; while a certain little devil of feminine jealousy against her husband added to her disquietude. He, good fellow, had forgotten the long collection of Petrarchan poems written by him for her honour in the past, and which she had repaid with the gift of five children. Not the least little sonnet issued from his pen to celebrate her now. His lyrics were addressed to another idol of the moment.

Meanwhile she set great store upon her personal importance. Every member of our family, who wanted a ducat, a pair of shoes, or something of the sort, came to her with humble supplications, imploring her good offices at head-quarters—and Heaven knew where head-quarters were. This honour and glory made up to her for all her heroic labours in the little realm, which she administered with real authority, though her right to do so was contested, and her schemes were pindarically unpractical.

My younger brother, Almorò,[130] was also at our villa, on a holiday from school—the non-existent school he never went to. His education seemed to have been of the slightest, and his wardrobe left even more to be desired. A boy of good heart and parts, however; gay-spirited and innocent; he was not old enough and had not time to reflect upon our troubles; setting snares for little birds was all his pastime, and when he talked to me, I heard only of the number and the kinds of birds he caught, and the important adventures he had met with in his fowling expeditions.

My father did not converse with me, because he could not; my mother, because she would not. Gasparo's five children with their quarrels and their games broke in upon the only solace which I had, that of reading and writing.

To all the complaints I heard, to all the exhortations which were daily heaped upon me, I gave one only answer: we will see and think it over.

One thing emerged with distinctness from this hurlyburly of our family. If I attempted any salutary innovation in the wasp's nest of my relatives, I should find no difficulty in gaining supporters to assist me in my opposition to the government; but the government was in the hands of women, under the shadow of my father's authority; I should therefore be misrepresented to him, prejudiced as he was by education, susceptible and hot-blooded by temperament, enfeebled by chronic illness; and he was still the master, still my father, loved and respected by me. I doubted whether anything which I could do would not prove ineffectual or worse. I was afraid of becoming the object of everybody's hatred; for I observed that personal considerations, rather than wise reflection and moderate ambitions, were the motive principles of all the folk I had to deal with. Finally I dreaded giving such a shock to my father's declining frame as would cut short the few days of life which still remained to him. The sequel will show that these anticipations were not ill-founded.

In these circumstances I determined to exercise the strictest self-control, and to bear with everything during my father's lifetime. Literature and my favourite studies of the world meanwhile would suffice to entertain me. Knowing that my uncle Almorò Cesare Tiepolo was in the country on an estate of his not far from where we lived, I went to pay him my respects. He inquired how I had been treated in Dalmatia by his Excellency Quirini. I answered that he had treated me very well indeed, but that he could not give me any permanent commission, because our troops had been drafted into Italy. He then proposed to recommend me to his Excellency the Provveditore Generale at Verona. I replied that I was grateful for his interest on my behalf, but that Mars had not inspired me with a vocation for military service. I foresaw that I should have to employ all my energies upon the affairs of my family, which were calling loudly for my assistance. Shaking his head and pursing up his lips, he answered that what I said was only too true.

XVII.
Return from Friuli to Venice with my family.—I pursue my chosen path in life, and open new veins of experience.—Yet further painful discoveries as to our circumstances.—The beginnings of domestic discord.

The month of November was wearing away when our family began to think of Venice. It amused me to watch the preparations for our journey and our luggage, which in no wise resembled that of the General's suite I had been used to. My father, an invalid; my mother, serious and diplomatical; my sister-in-law, the woman of business; my brother Gasparo, wool-gathering; our little sisters, intent upon the custody of their old-fashioned bonnets; Almorò, plunged in grief at leaving his birds and cages, which he consigned by something like a last will and testament to the bailiff; I, giving myself military airs, quite out of season; some serving-maids and men in worn-out livery; a few cats and dogs; these composed our travelling party, which might have been compared to a troupe of comedians upon the march.

I shall perhaps be told that there was no reason to enumerate these humiliating circumstances. But I have never had to blush for unworthy actions in my family; and it seems to me a poor philosophy that feels ashamed where no shame is. Such as it was, our caravan arrived in Venice, joking and laughing all the way. There we installed ourselves with as much disorder and as little comfort as was proper to a fine large mansion with nothing to fill its empty spaces.

For my own use I chose out a little room at the top of the house, where I set up a rickety table, provided myself with a huge inkstand and plenty of pens and paper, and spent at least six hours a day in reading and scribbling poetic nonsense. This was my best amusement; but I ought to add that I devoted some of my time to the cafés, studying types of character and listening to conversation; nor did I neglect our theatres, where I saw the various tragedies and comedies which appeared. My brother Gasparo had already given several serious pieces to the stage. They pleased the public then; and though they may be out of fashion now, they would not fail to please me still. I know the instability of taste too well to change my old opinions.

I had mixed with all sorts of men and learned to know their characters—generals, admirals, noblemen, great lords, officers, soldiers, the people of Illyrian cities, the Morlacchi of the villages, Mainotti, Pastrovicchi, convicts, galley-slaves. It was time, I thought, to become acquainted with my own Venetians. I began by cultivating a set of men who go in Venice by the name of Cortigiani.[131] My companions of this kind were chiefly shopkeepers and handicraftsmen, with a priest or two among the number; clever fellows, respectable, and versed in all the ways of our Venetian world. Their courage and readiness to take part in quarrels won them the respect of the common people, and they carried the art of getting the maximum of pleasure at a minimum of outlay to perfection. On certain holidays I joined their boating-parties, and went to shoot birds on the marshes with them. Or else we lunched together on the Giudecca, at Campalto, Malcontenta, Murano, Burano, and other neighbouring islands. My share of the expense on these occasions was not much above sixpence, and I gained the hearty good-will of my companions by contributing some slices of excellent Friulian ham to our common table. The characters and manners of these men delighted me; I took pleasure in listening to the stories of their quarrels, reconciliations, love-adventures, misfortunes, accidents of all kinds, told in racy Venetian dialect, with the liveliness which is natural to our folk. What is more, I learned much from them. Alas! the race of Cortigiani has degenerated, like everything else in this corrupt age. When I chance to meet a survivor of the honest jolly crew, he strikes his forehead, and confesses that the good days of his youth are irrecoverable, and that the Cortigiano is an extinct species.

Meanwhile I took good care to interfere with nobody and nothing in the household. This I did for my poor father's sake. But I kept my eyes open to observe the intrigues, schemes, and movements of the government. Some Jews, some brokers, and a crowd of women were always coming and going on secret conferences with my sister-in-law. These attracted my attention, and formed the subject of my earnest cogitations. It grieved me to see my brother Gasparo immersed in his philosophy and poetry, never for one moment giving the least thought to domestic economy. It grieved me; but I grieved in silence. There was one circumstance, however, which fairly put me out of patience. We had three sisters in the house; and a swarm of drones, hulking young fellows of the freest manners, kept buzzing round them. When I came home and found these visitors at their accustomed chatter, I used to scowl at them, lift my hat and put it on again, turn my back, and climb the stairs to my own den, with the fixed intention of making the gentlemen perceive how little their company attracted me. This manœuvre had its effect. My sister-in-law took it upon her to read me a matronly lecture on the impropriety of insulting friends of the family by my rough ways. I replied that I knew very well what friendship was, but that I could distinguish the false from the true; I was not conscious of having been rude to anybody; my father was the master, and if he did not mind some things which seemed to my inexperience imprudent and irregular, a mere lad's opinions were not worthy of consideration. This hint of my displeasure made all the women of the house regard me like a serpent. Even my three sisters, who loved me sincerely, and were excellent creatures, imbued with the soundest religious principles, could not help harbouring a trifle of suspicion in their feminine brains. For the rest, I said what I thought when I was consulted upon affairs of no importance. My advice in such matters pleased nobody. I ran on little errands if these were intrusted to me; and above all, I devoted some hours of every evening to my father, who always received me with tenderness and tears.

From conversation with my sisters I learned that the five thousand ducats raised by sale of lands in Friuli, ostensibly to make up portions for my married sisters, had either not been paid by the purchasers or had only reached the hands of the husbands in part. The same had happened with the drapery, linen, and jewels, for which a large debt had been contracted with a company of merchants. These and similar confidences made it clear to my mind that the marriages of my two sisters had not been arranged for their settlement in life so much as with the view of raising money under colourable pretexts, and of alienating entailed property with some show of legality. In fact, I scented disastrous dealings of the sort which are known at Venice by the name of stocchi.[132] As natural consequences of this crooked policy, urgent needs for ready money and embarrassments of all sorts had ensued, which led to fresh expedients and ever-growing financial distress.

Without attributing malice to any one, I merely blamed the bad luck of our family, owing to which my grandfather's fine estate had passed into the hands of women under two administrations, and had been wasted by a course of insane irregularities. I took care to send an accurate report of our domestic circumstances to my brother Francesco at Corfu. And now I must embark upon the sea of my worst troubles.

XVIII.
I become, without fault of my own, quite unjustly, the object of hatred to all members of my household.—Resolve to return to Dalmatia.—My father's death.

It had not escaped my notice that my mother and sister-in-law were in the habit of going abroad together in the mornings. During the five winter months they wore masks, and their proceedings had all the appearance of some secret business.[133] Now Carnival was over. We had reached the month of March 1745, a date which will be always painful to my recollection. Every morning the two ladies left the house together, no longer masked, but wearing the zendado.[134] I asked my sisters if they knew the object of these daily expeditions. They answered to the following effect: all they knew for certain was that my father's invalid condition made a residence in Venice irksome to him; now that the spring was advancing, he wished to go into Friuli with my mother, leaving our sister-in-law at the head of affairs in Venice; meanwhile the treasury was empty, the barns and cellars of our country-house had nothing left in them. I shrugged my shoulders, and kept silence.

A few days afterwards, while I was attempting to drive away care by study in my little upper chamber, my three sisters entered. They were weeping, and my first fear was lest my father should have died. Reassuring me upon this point, they passionately besought me to interpose between the family and shameful ruin. I alone was capable of doing this. The secret expeditions of my mother and sister-in-law had resulted in a contract with a certain Signor Francesco Zini, cloth merchant. He undertook to pay down six hundred ducats in exchange for our ancestral mansion, agreeing, moreover, to hand over a little dwelling of his own in the distant quarter of San Jacopo dall' Orio. They added that my father was ready to give his assent to this bargain, and my brothers Gasparo and Almorò would offer no opposition. I felt deeply moved by the distress of these poor girls as well as by my own keen sense of humiliation; and when they concluded by enjoining the strictest secrecy upon myself in the transaction, a gulf of dissensions, disagreeableness, and misery of all kinds seemed to yawn before my feet. Our pressing want of money, the contract verbally completed by my mother and sister-in-law, my father's consent, the adhesion of my brothers to the scheme, the obligation to secrecy laid upon me by my sisters, my own bad reputation in the household as a disturber of domestic quiet, my lack of friends and supporters in Venice, all filled me with terror. Yet I resolved to try what I could do to gratify my father's desire for the country, and to put a stop to this humiliating contract. With that object in view I also undertook a secret mission and went to visit Signor Francesco Zini.

I laid myself open to him in terms of flattering politeness, appealing to his excellent disposition, and pointing out that he was about to enter on a business which would expose him to risk and us to notable humiliation. I told him that my father had been an invalid for many years, that our ancestral mansion was subject to a strict entail, that on my father's death he would lose his money and the house, that all the sons of the family were not prepared to sanction the contract, that one of them was in the Levant, that I had not the least intention of assenting, and that the utmost I could do would be to abandon the house at my father's express command. Then I passed to the pathetic. I described a numerous family departing with their scanty bundles from the loved paternal nest, bowed down with grief and shame before the eyes of all their neighbours, who would be exclaiming: "See those gentlefolk upon the move, because their home has been sold over their heads!" I proved to him that if he gained a fine house to live in, he would also gain an odious and ugly reputation. Finally, I besought him, as a man of worth, to seize some plausible pretext for breaking a bargain which, happily for his advantage and our own, had not been ratified.

Over the fat, red, small-pox-pitted features of Signor Zini spread amazement and perplexity. He did not understand my rigmarole, he said; he was an honest man, pouring out his blood, not water, to obtain the house; my mother and sister-in-law, together with the broker of this honourable bargain, had assured him that my father wished to conclude it, and that all his sons were prepared to emancipate themselves from the paternal authority, in order to be able to sign the contract, thus giving it validity, and securing the rightful interest of the innocent purchaser. The affair had been settled, the necessary deeds were waiting on the bureau of Marchese Suarez, his advocate. Most assuredly, unless my father's male heirs procured their emancipation, in order to give validity to the contract in perpetuity, he would not unbutton his pockets to disburse a penny; he was not a fool, to be imposed upon with fibs and fables.

I commended the fat gentleman's perspicacity and caution; repeated that I had no intention of procuring my emancipation, and that nothing on earth would force me to consent; once more I begged him to find some excuse for breaking off the bargain; and wound up by imploring him to keep silence upon my interference in the matter. I made it clear that only a brute, devoid of Christian charity, would reject a son's entreaties, and render him odious to mother and father without any advantage to himself. He promised to respect my secrecy, wagging his huge scarlet jowl and lifting his night-cap, with so many protestations of being touched to the heart, that I ought to have been put upon my guard. I did not yet know human nature, and retired as happy as if I had taken Gibraltar by assault, feeling confident that my prudence and discretion had averted a lamentable catastrophe.

Nothing was said by me about the course which I had followed, even to my three sisters. I reflected that they were women, and awaited a quiet termination of the affair, trusting to Signor Zini's humanity. Meanwhile I ruminated how to procure my father's removal to the country, and how to help the family without waiting for the harvest, which would be finished in three months. I computed the value of my clothes, my watch, my snuff-box; prepared as I was then, to sell everything I possessed. But these calculations only reduced me to despair. My one real friend was Signor Massimo, then at Padua. I remembered that I already owed him two hundred ducats, and that he was living on an allowance from his father. Yet I knew that both father and son, as well as a brother of my comrade, were no less generous toward persons on whose character for loyalty and friendship they relied, than they were suspicious of intriguers and impostors. I was also aware that they were in a position to render me substantial services. How often, during the tempestuous vicissitudes of my existence, have I not had the opportunity to verify this fact!

While thus engaged in studying ways and means, Signor Zini broke rudely in upon my meditations. Possessed with the desire to obtain our dwelling for his own, he divulged the secret of my visit, and exposed what I had said to him in terms of his own choosing. My belief is that his communication amounted to this:—unless the hot-headed impetuous young fellow, who had come to treat with him, were brought to reason, and compelled to sign the contract, he refused to disburse two shillings.

I was in my upper chamber, studying as usual, and talking with my brother Almorò about his wretched schooling, when my mother appeared one day. Something of philosophical severity in her toilette, something imposing in her manner, which concealed, however, an internal irritation, proclaimed the gravity of her mission. She addressed herself pointedly to me, with the features of a judge rather than a mother, and began a long narration of the straits to which we were reduced. She said that, God be blessed, she had been inspired and assisted to discover six hundred ducats in the hands of a benevolent merchant, which would be placed immediately at her disposal upon such and such conditions. The notary was ready to engross the necessary deeds; and she begged me to declare what I thought about this special providence.

At the bottom of her heart I read Signor Zini's act of treason, and saw that I was lost. However, I answered respectfully that a contract of this kind struck me as anything but providential; still my father had full power to do what he thought fit, without rendering an account of his actions to his sons. She flamed up, and cried with a threatening air that my consent was also needed; she could not believe that I should be so rash and headstrong as to prevent a plan which would relieve my father and the family in our present painful circumstances. I could have uttered several truths without a wish to wound; but certain truths, once spoken, wound incurably. Therefore, I contented myself with observing that I was ready to shed my blood for my father, but that I could not assent to a contract so humiliating and ruinous, the last of a whole series dictated by suicidal policy. People who understood economy were in the habit of calculating and making provision for the future, not of selling or mortgaging their property to meet embarrassments created by their own extravagance. The latter course was rapidly bringing our whole family to the workhouse. Under a disastrous financial system our income had been reduced to three thousand ducats; yet I could not comprehend how we were in such straits as she had described. When people were unable to maintain a decent state in the capital, they could live at ease in the country at one-third of the same cost. Houses ought to be let, and not sold. Still my father had the power to make any contract he thought right; only I did not believe him capable of forcing me to give consent against my will and judgment.

The gestures of submission, respect, and supplication with which I accompanied this speech had no power to mollify the pungency of its significance. My mother rose, with her arms akimbo, and inquired who it was I meant to blame for our misfortunes. Instead of telling the bitter and irrefutable truth, I said that I only blamed fate and the misfortunes themselves. "I reckon," she replied with a smile of fury, "that you will give in your adhesion." "Indeed I shall not," was my answer; and the profound bow with which I spoke these words had the appearance of impertinent irony, although God knows I did not mean it. This was enough to fan the smothered flames into a Vesuvius in eruption. My mother bent her stormy brows upon me—upon the sixth finger of her maternal hands—and broke into the following declamation. "From the moment of my return she had prophesied, like Cassandra, that I should turn the household upside down. She did not know me for one of her own children. The intimacy of a certain friend to whom I had attached myself was ruining the family, as it had ruined me. (Poor innocent generous Signor Massimo!) If I had behaved well during my three years' service, his Excellency Quirini would certainly have rewarded me with some good military situation. As it was, my excursion into Dalmatia had been a source of burdensome expense. I had led a vicious life there ... she knew ... she did not mean to speak ... but ... enough ... and my debt of two hundred ducats to Massimo was merely a sum lost by me at basset."

Now this debt had not yet been paid, and had therefore been of no inconvenience to my family. Such extravagant accusations took me by surprise; and the reader will now perceive the reason of the accounts which I rendered in a former passage of these Memoirs. I should perhaps have flown into a fury alien to my real nature, if these reproofs had been based on truth. The wounding allusion to Signor Massimo nearly roused me, but I preserved my self-control. It was clear that my mother had been deeply prejudiced and cruelly instigated against me. The consciousness of my innocence and a sense of duty made me stand before her rigid and mute as a statue. With an impulse of affection, maternal as it seemed, my mother took my brother Almorò by the arm, and gazing at me with contempt, which strove to be compassionate, she addressed these words to him: "Come away, my dear boy; let us leave that madman to the error of his ways!" Then she turned her back and led him from the room, as though she were saving an innocent creature from some fearful danger.

Convinced by this tragi-comedy that I was the victim of a family cabal, I saw no other course open but to resume my commission as a cadet of cavalry. I left my room, went downstairs, and found all the family (except my father) assembled in commotion, listening to the commiserations of their usual friends enraged against me. It had been proclaimed aloud that I had called them all thieves, retorted against my mother with scandalous and impious audacity, and betrayed my determination to make myself the tyrant of the household. Even my three sisters, who had urged me into opposition, showed themselves sulkily scornful; and though I might have exposed them before the whole company, I did not deign to do so. Confirmed in my resolve to leave Venice for Dalmatia, I buckled on my sword, wasted no words about my intention, and repaired to the Riva dei Schiavoni, to see if I could find a ship for Zara. There I discovered that a trabacolo would set sail in four or five days. The captain was a certain Bernetich. I took down his name, and, wrapped up in my own dark thoughts, spent all that day in exile, wandering far from home.

On my return, I noticed that, though everybody wore a crabbed face against me, something had happened to their satisfaction. Signor Zini, it appeared, was willing to execute the contract without requiring my consent. I did not know that my brother Francesco had left a power of attorney to act for him in Gasparo's hands. With voices of triumph they all exclaimed together that the great sacrifice was to be solemnly and legally performed next day. I did not care to inquire how things had been brought to this conclusion; but putting on as cheerful a face as possible, I went to keep my poor father company as usual for a few hours in the evening.

It will be as well at this point to describe the topography of our house. It was originally built for two separate residences, with double entrances upon the street and water-side, two staircases and two cisterns. At the time when it was planned, the Gozzis formed two families, which were afterwards reduced to one. We occupied the lower floor and some apartments in the highest storey. The second floor was let for 150 ducats a year to an honest iron-monger called Uccelli; but this portion of the mansion had also been sold upon my father's life, by one of those contracts which were only too frequent in our family, for the sum of 1200 ducats to his Excellency the Procuratore Sagredo.

I did all in my power to avoid the least allusion to the painful scenes of the preceding day; but my dear father kept gazing earnestly at me, and shedding tears from time to time. In vain I tried to inspire him with happier thoughts. Would that I could banish all recollection of that night, which was one of the most sombre, the most painful, in the whole course of my existence. Paralysed and dumb for seven long years, he yet retained his mental faculties in their full vigour. Summoning all his force, by signs and stammerings and tears, he made it only too clear how much he suffered from the miserable straits to which the family had been reduced. He also continued to express his sympathy with me for my dislike to sign the projected contract. To my surprise and grief, he intimated that I had only a brief time to wait; his swift approaching death would restore to us the upper dwelling, which had been sold upon his life, and which was much better than the one we occupied. This inarticulate but eloquent discourse ended in a flood of tears. Deeply moved to the bottom of my heart, I strove to tranquillise his mind, and direct his thoughts from such afflicting topics. I perceived that no pains had been spared to make me odious in my father's eyes, and that this had been done without the least regard for his infirmity. Yet I did not attempt to justify my conduct, and said nothing about my firm resolve to leave home. His departure for Friuli had been fixed on the third day after this fatal evening, and I mentally decided to set out for Dalmatia two days later on. My assumed cheerfulness, and the merry turn I gave to all those dismal subjects of reflection, seemed to tranquillise him. Then he tried to lift himself from his arm-chair, as though to get to bed. I helped to raise him, but he tottered more than usual, and sank with his knees toward the ground. I took him in my arms to keep him from falling. Agonising moment! It was clear that a last stroke of apoplexy was carrying away my father from my arms. In a loud voice and with perfect articulation he pronounced the words: "I am dying!" They fell like lead upon my heart, with such cruel force that I nearly dropped. My mother, who was present, fled from the room. I called aloud for aid. Servants hurried in; one of these I dispatched for medical assistance, while the others helped me to place my poor dear father, now quite incapable of any movement, on his bed. A physician, Doctor Bonariva by name, had him bled at once. But nothing could be done to save his life. Assisted by Don Pietro Pighetti, now Canon of S. Marco, in the last religious duties of our creed, he displayed all the signs of Christian resignation and intelligence; and after eight hours of oppression, toilsome suffering, and the pangs of death, my unhappy parent closed his eyes upon the vast obscurity in which his family was plunged.

XIX.
My attempts at pacification defeated.—Useless philosophical reflections.—A terrible domestic storm begins to brew.

No sooner had my father breathed his last than my lady sister-in-law, all activity and bustle, issued from the room of mourning, and took upon her to console his sorrowing children with the convincing statement that he was the most lovely corpse which eyes of men had ever seen. This wholly unexpected statement, which had nothing of humanity, morality, or philosophy in it, and which she kept repeating and affirming upon oath for our relief, filled me then, and fills me now, with such fury, that I should be angry to think that any of my readers could laugh at it.

One disastrous thought kept breaking in upon our sorrow at this tragic moment. Am I to record it? We had neither the wherewithal to provide a decent interment for my father, nor the credit to obtain it. The habitués of the house gave words in abundance, but no pecuniary aid. I had only one friend, Massimo, my creditor, the object of my relatives' calumnies. Grief inspired me with the thought of writing to lay our difficulties before his generous mind. The special messenger by whom I sent this letter returned with a sum of money more than sufficient to defray the expenses of a becoming funeral. On receiving it, I took my brother Gasparo apart, placed the money in his hands, and told him who had given it. Then I begged him not to misinterpret what I was about to say. He was my elder, and I willingly acknowledged him to be the head of our family. He could not be blind to the deplorable condition into which we had declined. Duty required that he should take the reins with manly resolution, and should withdraw the management of our affairs from the hands of those who had brought us to utter shipwreck. My brother accepted the money and my speech as well as might have been expected from a man of his excellent disposition and superior intelligence. He admitted that he saw the necessity of a thorough economical reform, carried through with virile firmness. Some increase of income, owing to the expiration of contracts made upon my father's life, would facilitate the undertaking. He was willing to relinquish literary occupations, which were neither appreciated nor remunerated in Italy, for the sake of being able to devote his energy and time to the administration of our common property.

I did not flatter myself that anything so much to be desired would come to pass. I knew how impossible it is for people to change their character and nature. I knew his wife's meddlesome, restless, imperious thirst for ruling—his own peaceable temperament, averse from opposition, addicted to the habits of a student. Yet I saw the necessity of taking the step I did, if only to correct the bad impression of myself, which had grown up under malevolent influences in the family.

I had no heart to follow my father to the grave, but shut myself up in my little chamber, where I gave way through three days and three nights to grief, not unmingled with remorse for having innocently helped to hasten his death. Nothing less than this tragedy was needed to cancel Signor Francesco Zini's contract.

I feel some repugnance at sitting down to write what happened at this epoch in my family. I wish that I could tell the tale without appearing to censure any of my relatives and without seeming to draw a vain-glorious picture of myself. The truth at any cost has to be reported; but I protest with emphasis, and this is also true, that I always experienced real pain when I beheld the disastrous consequences which the faults of others brought upon themselves, and that I neither took pleasure in revenge, nor cherished sentiments of ambition in doing good to my family—if indeed I did do good. The reader will be able to judge of that from the sequel of these Memoirs.

When a group of closely related persons in one household fall to quarrelling, all the causes which perpetuate faults of character and conduct begin to operate. Each member of the company is perfectly acquainted with the weak side of his neighbour, and knows exactly how to sting him to the quick. Exacerbated tempers and prejudiced minds judge everything awry, while partisans and flatterers add fuel to the fire. Zeal is misconstrued into craft and tyranny; no protestations and no arguments suffice to remove such false impressions. The torment of the hell in which one has to live blinds reason and enslaves the freedom of volition; years of unhappiness pass by before the weapons of vindictive rage are blunted by constant acts of toleration and disinterested deeds of kindness, and the innocent are seen in their true light. To blame the doings of a family divided against itself is much the same as blaming the actions of somnambulists.

We had never used the outward demonstrations of affection, kisses and caresses, in our domestic circle. Yet we were bound together by real sentiments of friendliness and love on all sides. Unluckily the seeds of discord had already begun to germinate in our brains. Besides my mother, three brothers and three sisters, my sister-in-law was there, with her hot, headstrong, vindictive temperament, her aptitude for colouring everything to suit her own purpose, and her established dominion over the minds of my relations. During my father's long illness there had been no real head in the household. Everybody passed for master. No one learned the virtues of submission and filial obedience. Each member of the family had his own engagements, his own separate obligations, together with the passions proper to himself as a human being. There was no defect of intelligence or mental energy. But lacking a central authority which might have brought man's egotistic passions into wholesome subjection, self-love and caprice turned the individuals of the group into so many political agents, bent on achieving their own ends, without regard for the common interest. I must not omit the chronic malady under which we suffered—that predilection for poetry, which tinged all we thought and planned with romanticism. During a period of many years no records had been kept either of the income derived from our estate, or of the sales which had been made. With perfect justice each in turn denied that he had directed our affairs. In such circumstances the death of the father leaves a family exposed to direst intestine warfare; and I should be both indiscreet and inhuman if I were to lay the whole blame of what ensued upon any of the six relatives whom I have mentioned.

A young man like myself, of little more than twenty years, prone to thinking rather than to speaking, with a military air acquired abroad, when he found himself in the middle of so many working brains, and attempted to effect a total revolution, could not but raise irascibilities of all sorts and expose himself to odious suspicions. The portrait which I mean to paint of my own physical and other qualities will perhaps reveal defects which rendered such suspicions, unjust as they are, at any rate excusable.

My mother was not so overwhelmed by the recent loss of her husband as to be unable to think of business. She demanded the repayment of her dowry, small as it was, like one who feels the coming shipwreck and seeks a skiff for his salvation. My sister-in-law, bent as usual on displaying her talent for affairs, called the brokers, Jews, and female go-betweens around her. My sisters were always conferring in secret among themselves, or with my sister-in-law, who kept promising them husbands and marriage-portions. My brother Gasparo, at the very moment when he solemnly promised to assume the reins of government, handed over the money I had got from Padua to his wife, to do as she thought best with, reserving only a few coins for his own purse. Then he relapsed into his ordinary ways of life, his literary studies, his society of wit and genius, and gave no signs of any firm intention to make himself the master.

About twenty days had passed since my father died, when I was summoned to a serious conference with my elder brother, my mother, and my sister-in-law. We seated ourselves upon four straw-bottomed rickety chairs, and my sister-in-law, with an air betokening the gravity of the occasion, moved the following resolution. Signor Massimo ought to be repaid (this, mark well, was meant to gain me over). With a view to discharging the debts we owed him, and for other urgent necessities, it would be advisable to sell the upper dwelling in our town-house for the sum of 1200 ducats on the lives of us four brothers. A purchaser was ready (possibly Signor Francesco Zini). The capital left over would enable us to put our affairs in order, and to go forward swimmingly upon a new and proper method of administration. My mother blinked approval of this fine idea. My brother declared that it was the only course left open to us. They all looked at me and waited for my assent. I did not comprehend by what right my mother and sister-in-law took part in the conference, or how my brother was not ashamed of cutting the figure he did there, and of following his wife's suggestions with such docility. A hell of squabbling yawned before me, and I answered as coldly as I could that, so far as Signor Massimo was concerned, I could trust his generous indulgence towards a friend in difficulties, and that I did not approve of selling property upon our joint lives. Such a step seemed to me mere progress on the former road to ruin. I should prefer to let our mansion, removing the whole family to the country, where we could live for one-third of the expense, until our debts were paid and the estate was nursed into comparative prosperity.

This scandalous ultimatum, which wounded the inclinations and the self-interest of every member in the family, won me the reputation of a very Dionysius of Syracuse. Day by day, in secret conclaves, the storm against me grew and gathered strength. My brother Francesco, however, had written from Corfu that he was coming home, and I judged it prudent to await his arrival. Until I gained his support, I stood alone, hated and dreaded like a fatal comet by my kindred. To distract my mind from painful thoughts, I summoned all my mental forces, and poured forth torrents of verse and prose and bizarre fancies upon paper. All through my long and troubled life I have drawn relief from two main sources. One is my own robust and democratic[135] bent of mind. The other is my aptitude for studying human nature and for writing. I may truly say that the exercise of fancy and the art of composition have been to my mental pains what opiates are to physical torments.

XX.
We plunge from bad to worse, deeper and deeper into the mire.

When my brother Francesco arrived from the Levant, I explained to him the state of our affairs, and my own wishes with regard to their administration. We both decided that he should repair to Friuli, and undertake the management of our estates there. Gasparo was to remain titular head of the family, while Francesco received rents, kept strict accounts, and provided for the common household. Meanwhile we begged our mother to charge herself with certain domestic duties, and our sister-in-law with certain others, hoping by this apportionment of officers to introduce harmony and order into the establishment. My sister-in-law displayed a really exemplary resignation, merely expressing her desire that, at this juncture, the account-book of expenditure which she had kept for some years past should be signed by her husband and his three brothers, in token of approval and in discharge to her of all pecuniary obligations.

I strove to make her understand that there was no need for such a receipt in form; nobody would dream of calling her to account, and we were all very grateful for her services. She would not listen to my arguments, but insisted on our signing a certain notebook scrawled with cabalistic characters and numbers. Francesco observed that we might safely sign, for the sake of peace and quiet. Having entered our family without a farthing, accompanied by her father and mother, whom we had supported for many years and buried at our own charges, she was incapable of making claims on the estate. To this he added that he had consulted lawyers, and that he was quite convinced of the propriety of yielding to her wishes.

The sequel of this history will show that his reasoning, though plausible enough, was faulty, and that the policy he recommended led to further complications. Gasparo and Almorò had already signed; Francesco was prepared to follow suit; I did not care to take the odium of standing out alone. Accordingly, four signatures were generously appended to the mass of undecipherable hieroglyphics, without any attempt on our part to examine the accounts, which by this act we formally accepted.

Francesco set off for Friuli, after promising to maintain a detailed correspondence with Gasparo on the state and management of our farms there, and not to let himself be wheedled out of money or produce at the demand of every one and anybody. I did not then know what a worthless coadjutor I had summoned to support my policy. Without the least intention to defraud, he was governed by an insect's blind instinct for his own particular advantage. Under a compliant exterior, he concealed the subtlety of a diplomatist. His sole aim was to temporise and make concessions, with the view of bringing matters to a rupture and of obtaining his own share in the division of our common patrimony. This end he pursued in secrecy and silence, without reflecting on his duties to the family, or the position of our three unmarried sisters, and the discords which his pursuit of self-interest was bound to foment.

What followed after his departure for Friuli seemed conclusively to prove that a plan had been laid to drive him to the Levant and me to Dalmatia by involving us in embarrassments of all sorts. I accuse nobody; the heated passions which raged round us, and the injuries from which I suffered, deserve compassion more than blame.

Scarcely a day passed without letters being sent from Venice, begging my brother to dispatch provisions or money on various pretences. He complied with every application, whether it bore the name of Gasparo or of my mother or my sister-in-law. In the course of some seven months he had exhausted the whole harvest of that year, without asking for accounts or disputing the claims made upon the property he managed. In like manner the profits of certain houses in Venice, and of some farms at Bergamo and Vicenza, amounting to 800 ducats, had been dissipated. When letters still kept coming, demanding supplies and setting forth our urgent needs, my brother could only answer that there was nothing left to send. It was vain to inquire how the casks of wine and sacks of corn and bags of cash had vanished. Everybody had taken something to defray his own particular expenses. One said, "I got only so much;" another, "I got so much; I did this, and I did that." Gasparo knew less than anybody how matters had been managed, and had kept no account of the least article. The conclusion arrived at was that we must all die of hunger unless we sold some piece of the estate upon our joint lives.

"Ora incomencian le dolenti note."

"And now begins the Iliad of our woes."

XXI.
My attitude of patient calm is useless.—Volcanic eruptions, machinations, tragi-comic civil wars within our household.

At this point I resolved to step forth boldly and to take the whole weight of our affairs upon my shoulders, without troubling my head about being called a tyrant and disturber of domestic peace. I proclaimed aloud that the family must retire for some time into the country and economise. Nothing would induce me to consent to sales or mortgages. Then I began to contract debts on my own account, and to part with my personal trifles for the support of the household. I soon saw that it was impossible in this way to keep fifteen people, servants included, at Venice. Whenever I insisted upon the necessity of leaving for the country, all the women rose in revolt, and turned their backs without a word of answer. Our dining-table became the scene of daily quarrels, sullen faces, surly glances, biting speeches. I was deeply grieved to observe that a final division of the estate was drawing nearer and nearer. To avert this catastrophe seemed impracticable, and I reflected gloomily upon the condition to which my brother Gasparo would be reduced, with a wife and five children to support upon the fourth part of our encumbered property. Meanwhile I could not blame him except for his incurable indolence and absolute immersion in studies for which I shared his weakness.

Among the habitués of the house, none of them friends of mine, were certain lawyers. I noticed that these gentlemen had frequent conferences with the ladies of the family who ruled my brother. They were clearly plotting against me, and seeking means to set the machinery of the law in movement in order to hamper my free action. There was also a lady to whom the female members of my family paid visits every evening. She was the Countess Elisabetta Ghellini of Vicenza, widow of the patrician Barbarigo Balbi, who died some years before this epoch, leaving her the mother of an only son. It is exceedingly rare to find a lady endowed with the excellent qualities of heart and head which she possessed in a supreme degree. About forty years of age, infirm of health, and exposed to constant litigation through various claims advanced against her moderate estates, she bore the trials of life with steady courage and constant trust in Heaven. Her chief interest was the education of her son, a boy of eight or nine, for whom she had provided masters, while she herself instilled into his mind the principles of sound religion and morality. Gifted with a lively intellect, and fond of literature, she spent a large part of the day in reading poetry, and opened her house to a society composed mainly of persons who had suffered in the battles of life. Her extreme sympathy for the afflicted led her to despoil herself with admirable intrepidity, and to bestow on others what was needed for her own support. This compassionate and pious lady had for her adviser and advocate in the numerous lawsuits to which she was condemned, the celebrated Conte Francesco Santorini.

It will appear from the sequel that this digression upon the Countess Ghellini was needed to explain an important passage in my life. Amid the din and squabbles of our home, I used at times to catch fragments of the panegyrics poured forth by my female relatives and Gasparo upon this lady, and heard them rehearse the sonnets which they intended to recite in her honour, or to offer for her recreation. Such was the common custom at that period, observed by poets in the houses they frequented. I speedily divined that a plot was in process of formation to secure the assistance of a very famous advocate against me. Trusting this intuition, I resolved to introduce myself, although I had received no invitation, to the lady whom my enemies so warmly praised.

She received me, and asked who I might be. On giving my name, the noble and yet kindly distance of her manner changed suddenly to sternness. A few phrases which I thought it right to utter about her interest in my relatives increased this expression of reserve; and she began to speak as follows, with the happy choice of words which was peculiar to her: "Sir, I am a poor woman as regards the wealth of this life, but by the grace of God I am rich in the possession of good sentiments and a sound education. Your family is cultivated, and deserves to meet with kindly feeling and esteem from all the world. It is a pity that such a family should be annoyed and brought to sorrow by a certain individual bound to it by ties of blood, duty, and respect. A mother of very noble birth treated with contempt, sisters domineered over, persons of merit regarded with hatred—all kinds of extravagances and injustice—such things dishonour the individual of whom I speak." This preamble made me feel inclined to bow myself out of the room in silence, since I am by nature far from prone to justify my innocence; but politeness and a fear that a certain famous advocate, if prejudiced against me, might upset my plans, kept me where I was. I suffered, however, keenly from the barbarous picture which had been presented to me, and began to plead in self-defence. She interrupted me by saying that she did not believe me to be entirely bad-hearted, and that if I ceased to follow the counsels of a certain friend of mine, I might become a rational and right-feeling young man. So then, here was Signor Massimo once more made a scape-goat—the friend who had assisted me in Dalmatia, succoured my family in our distress, and who still remained our uncomplaining creditor. The impropriety of this attack stung me so sharply that I could not hold my tongue. I had been treated as a knave and fool without losing patience; but never in my life have I heard my friends insulted without resenting the injustice.

I told the lady, knitting my brows and speaking seriously, that she was bound to listen to me: unless, as I thought not, she was indifferent to equity. Prejudice, I said, is a very unjust judge, and I did not wish her to fall into that category. Then I entered into a candid narration of our family affairs. I described the ill results of reckless mal-administration. I related what had already happened and was sure to happen, what I wanted, how I was opposed, my honourable intentions, the plots and schemes to thwart me, the services rendered by my friend and his guiltlessness of any machinations. I could see that she was both surprised and penetrated by my reasoning. Just at this point Conte Francesco Santorini entered the apartment, tired and drowsy. We exchanged greetings, and the lady spoke to him in this way: "Count, you were quite right to doubt about the Gozzi. This gentleman has put a very different face upon the matter, and I know not what to think." The Count sank sleepily into a chair, murmuring: "Did I not tell you that you ought to hear both sides? The chatter of women, heated brains" ... And having said these words, he subsided into slumber.

I begged this noble lady to continue her protection to our family, and to receive the visits which I hoped to pay her; if she sought to help us, she could do so by allaying the fever which was burning in so many irritated bosoms. For my part, I cultivated her friendship through many long years, until death forced me to deplore the loss of one whom I esteemed and reverenced. My relatives, on the other hand, gradually relaxed in their attentions, ceased to visit her, and changed their eulogistic sonnets into petty satires.

XXII.
The dogs of the law are let loose on me by my family.—It is impossible to avoid a separation.

As time went on, my steady intention to remove our family into the country, and my other plans of reform, roused my domestic antagonists to various pettifogging stratagems. The black-robed seedy myrmidons of the courts began to haunt our dwelling, taking inventories of every nail on the pretext of my mother's dowry, delivering demands in form from my three sisters for maintenance and marriage portions, presenting bills for drapery and jewels furnished by a company of merchants to the tune of 1500 ducats, and suing on the part of my two brothers-in-law for some 4000 ducats owed to them. Little creditors of all descriptions rose in swarms around us; and what was still more astounding, my sister-in-law advanced a claim of 900 ducats, due to her, she said, upon the statement of accounts which we had signed so negligently. One would have thought the myrmidons and ban-dogs of the law had been unleashed by hunters bent on driving a wild beast from his lair; while the satisfaction and triumph depicted on the faces of my relatives showed too clearly who were the real authors of this legal persecution.

I bore the brunt of these attacks with my habitual philosophy of laughter, drew closer to my brother Almorò, and informed Francesco by letter of what was being conspired against us. Count Francesco Santorini helped me at this pinch with excellent advice. Under his direction I took the following measures. Francesco received instructions to hold fast by every rood of our Friulian property, and to send me copies of any writs which might be served upon him there. I recognised my mother's dowry, and offered annual payments to the merchants and my brothers-in-law. To my sisters I replied in writing that their maintenance should be duly attended to, but that it was impossible to create marriage portions for them under the conditions of entail to which the estate was subjected. With regard to the monstrous claims advanced by my sister-in-law, I flatly denied their validity until they had been submitted to a court of justice. Then I proceeded to meet the current expenditure of our establishment as well as I was able, while waiting for the time of harvest; and all this I did without mooting the question of Gasparo's separation from our brotherhood, in the hope that little by little things would settle down in peace and quietness. Vain and idle expectation! My reforms, by cutting at the root of vested interests, and checking the arbitrary sway of Heaven knows whom, merely fanned the flames of rage which burned against me. In a private memorial, addressed to my mother, brother, sister-in-law, and sisters, I finally explained the impossibility of supporting the family any longer at Venice, exposed as I was to annoying and expensive litigation with the very persons who ate and drank at the same table. I might just as well have talked to images. Writs issued by my mother, my sister-in-law, my sisters, fell in showers. Slights and insults thickened daily. Our common table had become a pit of hell, worthy to be sung by Dante. To such a state of misery had irrational dissensions brought a set of relatives who really loved each other.

In order to shelter Almorò and myself from the wordy missiles which fell like hail all dinner-time, I had a little table laid for us two in a separate apartment. The covers were removed with rudeness, on the pretext that the linen, plates, dishes, &c., belonged to my mother's dowry, and that if I wanted such furniture I must buy it. Pushed in this way to extremities, I decided to leave a house which had become for me a hell on earth. Perhaps it was impolitic to take this step. But I could not stand these petty persecutions longer. Before quitting the infernal regions, I begged permission from my mother to take away the beds in which my brother Almorò and I enjoyed our troubled slumbers, offering to pay their price to the credit of her dowry. She replied with a sardonic smile of discontent that she could not grant my request, since the beds were needed by the family. I accepted this refusal with hilarity.

"E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle."

"And thence we issued to review the stars."

XXIII.
Calumnious reports, negotiations, a legal partition of our family estate, tranquillity sought in vain.

I had hardly settled down with my brother Almorò in the remote quarter of S. Caterina, where lodgings are cheap in proportion to their inconvenience and discomfort, before the whole town began to talk about our doings. Three of the brothers Gozzi, it was rumoured, had laid violent hands upon the family estate; their eldest brother with his wife and five children, their three unmarried sisters, and their mother, a Venetian noblewoman worthy of all respect, had been plunged in tears and indigence by the barbarous inhumanity of these unnatural monsters. The hovel I had hired, and where I suffocated with Almorò in the smoke of a miserable kitchen, ill-furnished and waited on by an old beldame called Jacopa, was besieged by the myrmidons of the law. Everything was done to dislodge me from the city, and to make me abandon the line of action on which I had resolved. Democritus and my innocence came to my aid; and I determined to stand firm with silent and passive resistance.

In these painful circumstances I heard to my great sorrow that my brother's wife had persuaded him to become the lessee of the theatre of S. Angelo at Venice.[136] Her romantic turn of fancy, together with her love of domination, made her conceive wild hopes of profit from this scheme. A company of actors were engaged at fixed salaries; and she was to play the part of controller, purse-holder, and stage-manager for the troupe at Venice and on the mainland. Moved by pity for my brother and his innocent children, I did everything I could, without appearing personally in the matter, to dissuade this hot-headed woman from so perilous an enterprise. She repelled all such attempts with scorn, being firmly convinced that she would gain a fortune and make her brothers-in-law bite their nails with envy.

I saw that the division of our patrimony could no longer be postponed, and civilly intimated to Gasparo that the time was come for taking this supreme step. Articles were accordingly drawn up, whereby the several parcels of our estate in Friuli, Venice, Bergamo, and Vicenza were partitioned into four lots. Provision was made for the repayment of my mother's dowry and for the proper maintenance of my three sisters, all of whom elected to reside with Gasparo. A fund was formed for the liquidation of debts, the charge of which devolved on me. I undertook to render an annual report of this operation, showing how I had bestowed the monies in my hands as trustee for the family. Nothing was fixed about my sister-in-law's claims for reimbursement; but it will be seen that when her theatrical speculation proved a ruinous failure, I had to take these also into account. Gasparo expressed a wish to obtain the upper dwelling in our mansion as part of his share. The lower dwelling was conceded to Francesco, Almorò and myself. To my mother and sisters we offered the hospitality of sons and brothers, in case at any time they should repent of their decision to abide with Gasparo.

It might be imagined that, while these negotiations were in progress, I had no time to spend on literary occupations. Nothing could be further from the fact. I found in them my solace and distraction, pouring forth multitudes of compositions, for the most part humorous and alien to the cares which weighed upon my mind. The course of my Memoirs will bring to light many curious incidents which these literary pastimes occasioned, and the narration of which will prove, I hope, far from saddening to my readers.

XXIV.
I enter on a period of toilsome litigation, and become acquainted with Venetian lawyers.

I should have been an arrant fool had I flattered myself with the hope that this partition would introduce the olive-branch of peace into our midst. On the contrary, I looked forward, and with justice, to all kinds of coming troubles. Two-thirds of the estate were saved from extravagant administration by the process; but the minds of Gasparo's family had been almost incurably embittered by the same cause. When I wanted to lay my hands upon our documents, in order to study the nature of various entails and trusts under which the estates were settled, I found that all these papers had been sold out of spite. Who had done this I did not learn, but I was informed in great secrecy by a servant-maid that they had been sold to a certain pork-butcher. I repaired immediately to his shop, and was only just in time to repurchase some abstracts and wills, which had not yet been used to wrap up sausages. Then I set to work in the cabinets of notaries and advocates and in the public archives, following the scent afforded by my recovered papers. More than eighty bulky suits in my own handwriting remain to show how patiently I studied the rights and claims of our estate, and now I prepared myself for the task of laying these before the courts.

At this epoch I made acquaintance with the celebrated pleader, Antonio Testa, under whose direction and advice I embarked upon a series of litigations which kept me fully occupied for eighteen years, and in the course of which I became acquainted with the men who haunt our palace of justice, and learned the chicaneries of legal warfare. Inveterate abuses, introduced in the remote past, and complicated by the ingenuity of lawyers through successive generations (most of them men of subtle brains, some of them devoid of moral rectitude), have been built up into a system of pleading as false as it is firmly grounded and imbued with ineradicable insincerity. This system consists, for the most part, of quibbling upon side-issues, throwing dust in the eyes of judges, cavilling, misrepresenting, taking advantage of technical errors, doing everything in short to gain a cause by indirect means. And from this false system neither honourable nor dishonest advocates are able to depart.

In justice to the legal profession, I must, however, say that I found many practicians who combined the gifts of eloquence and intellectual fervour with urbanity, cordiality, prudence, and disinterested zeal. Outside the vicious circle of their system they were men of loyalty and honour. Among these I ought to pay a particular tribute to my friendly counsel and defender, Signor Testa. Knowing my circumstances and my upright motives, he refused to take the fees which were his due, and not unfrequently opened his purse to me at a pinch in my necessities. I have never met with a lawyer more quick at seizing the strong and weak points of a case, more rapid in his analysis of piles of documents, more sagacious in divining the probable issue of a suit, or more acute in calculating the mental powers, the bias, and the equity of judges. Time and the circumstances of our several lives have drawn us somewhat apart. But nothing can diminish the feeling of deep gratitude which I shall always cherish for one who helped to heal the distractions and to improve the fallen fortunes of my family.

The final result of eight or nine tedious lawsuits, carried through with the assistance of Signor Testa, was that I received several parcels of our estates in Friuli, Vicenza, Bergamo, and Venice, which had been alienated by fraudulent evasions of entail.[137] Meanwhile I found time to visit my mother and Gasparo's family. The latter were busily engaged in concocting and translating plays for my brother's theatre. These visits, paid with cordiality and frankness on my side, were usually the occasions of requests for money on my mother's. She begged with maternal dignity for little loans. I complied to the best of my ability, and forgot to remind her of her debts. My sister-in-law forced herself to treat me with an affectation of flattery. My sisters looked upon me with real affection, checked in its expression by I know not what untoward influence. My brother accepted me with philosophical indifference.

XXV.
A collision with my brother's family, due to old grudges and to present needs.—They make me a married man without my having taken a wife.

My brother Gasparo's income, derived from his portion of the family estates, from the interest on my mother's dowry and the annual allowance for my sisters' maintenance, together with the profits of his writing and of certain literary services rendered to his Excellency Marco Foscarini,[138] late Doge of glorious memory, amounted to about 1500 ducats, free of all debts and obligations. This was certainly nothing very splendid; but neither would the wealth of Crœsus have been anything to boast of in the hands of an extravagant family, ruled only by the caprice of its component members.

I have mentioned above that Gasparo obtained the upper dwelling in our house at Venice, which was let for 150 ducats, while we three brothers received the lower dwelling, at that time inhabited by him. Some few months were allowed him to remove from the one apartment to the other. But no sooner had he entered into legal possession of his new habitation than he, or perhaps I ought to say his wife, let it again to the noble lady Ginevra Loredan Zeno. She paid the rent of several years in advance, and installed herself in Gasparo's part of the mansion, while he, with all his family, continued to inhabit our part with the utmost sang-froid, taking no further heed of the engagement he was under to us three brothers. Now we had resolved to put this tenement into good repair and to let it for some years, until the debts of the estate had been discharged and we could go to live in it at peace. With this view we had already found a tenant, who was no other than the Contessa Ghellini Balbi. She, on her side, had given up her old apartment, which was already let in advance to other tenants by her landlord. Time went on, and I saw no sign of our house being abandoned to our use, according to the family agreement. It appeared only too clearly that the partition I had demanded, my resolve to pay the family debts out of income without resorting to sale or mortgage, and my application to the courts for annulment of contracts made during my father's lifetime, were all of them unpardonable offences in the eyes of those who had made the debts, the mortgages, the contracts.

I began by gently asking for the house which was our portion, seeing that we had resigned the upper dwelling to our brother at his particular request. No answer reached me; but rumours ran around the city that I was now attempting to turn my old mother, my three marriageable sisters, my brother, his wife, and five innocent children into the streets. At this point I expected that one of those interminable lawsuits, which are the dishonour of the legal profession, but which never lack advocates to keep them going, would be commenced against me. In order to lend colour and substance to their false report, my relatives determined to give me a wife without consulting me. It was impossible to fix definite calumnies upon Mme. Ghellini Balbi, because of her exemplary life and conspicuous piety. But my daily visits to her house offered a pretext for injurious insinuations; and I soon heard it announced that I was secretly married to this lady, and that all my plots had only this one end in view. Such gossip did me honour in some respects. Yet I was grieved that a lady of excellent conduct, devoted to her only son, and old enough to be my mother, should be made the butt of malignant animosity.[139]

Without wasting time or breath in contradicting these unjust and lying vociferations of my private enemies, I made my mind up to obtain possession of my house by all the straightforward means in my power. Accordingly I managed to meet my brother apart from the din of women, and laid a clear statement before him of my obligations to Mme. Ghellini Balbi (who ran the risk of remaining without a roof to shelter her) and of my well-founded rights which were being iniquitously set at nought. The poor fellow seemed on the point of weeping. His gestures reminded me of patient Job, while he protested that he had nothing whatever to do with a state of affairs the injustice of which he frankly admitted. He added that he had to put up with infernal clamourings—that he was called a chicken-hearted poltroon, a father without entrails for his offspring—in short, that he was neither obeyed nor listened to at home. Then, to convince me that it was not he who opposed my entrance into our part of the house, he took a pen and wrote and signed a declaration to the effect that he fully acknowledged the title of his brothers Francesco, Carlo, and Almorò, and that he would never interfere to prevent our taking possession of our lawful property.

All these steps proved fruitless. Time pressed, and I found myself obliged to bring my cause before a judge, who chanced to be his Excellency Count Galean Angarano, at that time Avvogador del Comune.[140] What was my astonishment when I saw my sister-in-law, like an advocate in petticoats, at the head of my mother and my sisters, with my hen-pecked brother to bring up the rear, come marching into court. I will not dwell upon this too too comic scene—

"For my Thalia takes no thought to sing."

The judge recognised that my claims were indisputable. But before pronouncing sentence in my favour he strove to settle matters by mediation. Conferences took place; first between the bench and his Excellency the Senator Daniele Reniero, who acted for Mme. Ghellini Balbi; then between the Senator and my sister-in-law, who was the rock and stone of our vexation. I was curious to know the upshot of these whispered confabulations. At length Senator Reniero came up and told me that if I was willing to disburse sixty ducats, which my sister-in-law had pressing need of, I might enter at once into possession of the house without a verdict from the bench. Such a verdict would be appealed against and would certainly lead to indescribable delays. I thanked his Excellency for suggesting this arrangement. My sister-in-law received her ducats, and we obtained our dwelling. I had it straightway put into repair, for it looked as though it had sustained a siege. Mme. Balbi went at once to live there with a lease of five years only, while I retired with my brothers into a cheap house, which I had taken at S. Ubaldo and furnished with strict regard to economy. Here I arranged for Almorò's tuition by an excellent ecclesiastic. For my own part, I went on paying off debts, rebuilding such of our houses as needed it, prosecuting my lawsuits, and amusing myself in leisure hours with literature.

XXVI.
A serious event, depicting the character of my uncle, the Senator Almorò Cesare Tiepolo.

A very long time had elapsed since I visited my maternal uncle, the Senator Almorò Cesare Tiepolo. I imagined that my mother and the persons about her, who were assiduous in paying court to him from motives wholly alien to my nature, might have prejudiced the good old man against me. Still I did not choose to undergo the mortification of defending myself, especially as I could only do so by accusing those for whom at the bottom of my heart I felt both love and reverence. I knew, moreover, that our Venetian patricians, though just and dispassionate upon the bench in their capacity of judges, were singularly liable to be influenced by what they heard in private at their own homes from suitors or clients, and that it was extremely difficult to remove impressions which had once been made upon their minds. This weakness I have always ascribed to their amiability, and have regarded the nobles of our Republic as really adorable for qualities of the heart, in spite of the sentimental bias I have mentioned.

My habitual taciturnity and solitary ways of life, my neglect of petty social duties, my habit of asking and desiring nothing from fortune, together with the freedom of my pen, might have won me formidable enemies, if any such had deigned to look down upon a person of so little consequence as I am.

My wise and good uncle, who was suffering from a dropsy in the chest, and not far from death's door, let me know that he should like to see me. I went at once to his house; and was bidden to take a seat at his bedside. He began to complain gently that I had so long neglected to visit him. I answered frankly that I had stayed away through fear of his having been wrongfully prejudiced against me, and also because I heard that he was angry with me, perhaps on account of my prolonged absence. "If I complained," he said, "that my sister and your mother was being exposed to ill-treatment and affronts, this was no reason why you should suspend your visits." "I see," I replied, "that my suspicions and my fears are not without foundation. But this is not the proper time to trouble you with lengthy narratives in self-defence. Your health is a matter of concern to me for your sake and for my own. I have tried everything in my power to avert discords and divisions, even to the point of doing violence to my naturally pacific temper. I feel sure, when you recover, as I hope you will with all my heart, that I shall make it clear to you that I have hurt nobody and attacked nobody, and that I am only doing all I can to benefit our family, without the least regard for my mere private interest; nay, that I am bearing the burden of enormous cares and weighty business, not to speak of exposing myself to risks and dangers, for the common good."

He was just, prudent, a philosopher, and ill. Therefore he made no immediate answer. I renewed my daily visits, and had the satisfaction of hearing afterwards that the venerable old man expressed himself in these words to my mother: "Believe me, your son Carlo is a good young fellow."

His illness kept increasing, and I perceived, by the persons whom he urged to visit him, that he was anxious to be reconciled with all of his acquaintances who might be under the impression that he bore a grudge against them. A certain Frate Bernardo of the Gesuati, who then passed for a learned ecclesiastic, acted as his spiritual director, and used to read at his request portions of the Holy Scriptures aloud to him. Observing his indifference upon the point of death, this excellent friar was moved to say: "I do not want you to prepare yourself for death too much like a philosopher."

Though he had filled important posts in the Government, and had frequently sat as member of the sublime Council of Ten, he was never heard, throughout his last illness, to utter the least word regarding the tribunals of justice or the state.

During his whole lifetime he had taken delight in gathering company around his hospitable board, and seeing the table furnished with good cheer, especially with the choicest kinds of fish. Now that he was sick unto death, and could only take some spoonfuls of such broth as are administered to dying persons, he still would have the table served as formerly for guests. Every morning he used to send for one of his gondoliers, and inquire what sorts of fine fish were that day in the market. On receiving the man's report, he commented in praise or blame, as this might be, upon the season and the quality of the fishes for sale, and the various waters in which they had been caught. After settling these affairs of the household, he proceeded to religious exercises, grave discourses with his spiritual director, and prayers of fervent piety. I ought further to testify that he breathed his last in the spirit of a great man, philosophically Christian, and that his example inspired me with the desire to imitate his end.

He possessed the virtue of patience in the highest degree. No one ever saw his temper stirred by any untoward accident which happened to him. In order to give a single instance of his intrepid constancy, I will relate an event which happened some years before his death. One evening, while alighting from his gondola, he caught his foot in the long and ample robes of the patrician mantle, and was upon the point of falling into the canal. The gondolier, in his anxiety to catch and keep him up, let the oar go which he was holding in his hands. The oar fell with violence upon the right arm of his master, and broke it. The gondolier was not aware of what had happened; and my uncle, though he knew very well, uttered no complaint. He ascended the stairs, and when he reached his apartment, the valet came forward to help him off, as usual, with his cloak. Then at last he remarked with imperturbable long-suffering: "Pull gently, for my right arm is in two pieces." The uproar among the servants, who were greatly attached to him, was tremendous. The gondolier ran up, weeping bitterly and begging to be pardoned. He bade them all be calm, and said to the man: "You did me harm when you were meaning to do me good. What fault have you committed, which requires my pardon?" After this he had to lie forty days in bed without altering his position, at the surgeon's orders; yet he never uttered a syllable that betrayed any impatience. I could relate a number of such traits of character, but they have nothing to do with the Memoirs of my life.

After his death, which I felt very deeply, as every one could see, a certain Signor Giovannantonio Guseò came to call on me. This man practised as notary, land-surveyor, advocate, registrar, and judge in certain courts of Friuli. He was known to be more wily than the old Greek Sinon, and had assisted my brother's wife in procuring the alienation of certain portions of our entailed estates. Now he suggested that it would do me great honour, as a sign of affectionate remembrance, if I were to contribute ten sacks of flour and two casks of wine annually to my mother, in addition to her dowry. I saw at once from whom this proposal emanated, and admired the address with which the proper moment had been chosen for working on my feelings. Such artifices, however, were repugnant to my nature; and changing my tone from sadness to cold reserve, I replied to the following effect. "I thought my mother's preference for my brother Gasparo's family unfortunate; my own house was always open to her, and here she would be revered and loved by three respectful sons. Here she would enjoy her yearly maintenance, and the income of her dowry. By refusing our offer, she only affronted us. By accepting it, she would confer a benefit on Gasparo, the number of whose family would be diminished. Meanwhile, the obligation I was under of reducing debts, repairing buildings on the property, and reclaiming parts of the entailed estates, rendered it impossible that I should weaken the insufficient resources at my command by any such donation as Signor Guseò had proposed." This answer set tongues wagging again, and revived the opinion that I was a downright Phalaris.

The estate of my uncle Tiepolo had gained nothing by his regency of Zante and by other lucrative appointments. The probity of his character did not suffer him to enrich himself at the expense of the State. Accordingly, he provided by will that all his debts should be paid off, appending a schedule of his creditors. The residue he bequeathed to his sister Girolama for her lifetime, with reversion to my mother. On the same sad occasion my mother inherited a portion of some landed property in Friuli, which had belonged to an old aunt Tiepolo, who died intestate. This, united to her dowry, formed a sufficient fund for her establishment.

My mother continued to regard me as her sixth finger, amputated without any suffering on her part. Of course she had the right to dispose of her affections as she felt inclined, and to keep her tender heart open for the persons who possessed her favour. It was my misfortune not to possess it, but I did not envy those who had that privilege; and I can assure my readers that what caused me the greatest annoyance with regard to my mother, was seeing her always without a ducat to spend according to her fancy. This state of things continued when the whole property of that branch of the Tiepolos passed into her hands upon the death of her sister Girolama, who left furniture and a considerable amount of money to my mother, jointly with my brother Gasparo and his children.

XXVII.
It is decided that I was a husband, though I had no wife.—Some anecdotes of a serious character.

An event happened which clenched the gossip of my imaginary marriage to the Contessa Ghellini Balbi. The patrician Benedetto Balbi, Canon of Padua and Abbot of Lonigo, a gentleman abundantly endowed with gifts of nature and of fortune, who was this lady's brother-in-law, had caused himself to be legally appointed sole guardian of his nephew Paolo, the widow's only son. The lad may have been about ten years old at this epoch; and his uncle resolved to separate him from his mother, and to place him in a school kept by the Somascan fathers, at San Cipriano on the island of Murano.[141] His mother, who was tenderly devoted to her son, did not oppose his entrance into this college, but resented his being torn from the arms which had nursed and fostered him till now, as though she were a peril to his youth and had no claim to supervise his education in the school. Sharp and angry words passed; and Mme. Balbi applied to the courts, demanding to be nominated guardian together with her brother-in-law. The conflagration spread, and I, innocent as I was, found myself involved in it. With the object of strengthening his case, the Cavaliere went about the town, loudly protesting that his sister-in-law had contracted a second alliance with Count Carlo Gozzi; that she had ceased thereby to be a Balbi, and had lost all rights over the boy, who belonged to his family. I laughed, as usual, with the lady over the pertinacity of folk in thinking we were married. But my laughter was turned to seriousness, when the Cavaliere finally declared his intention to be free of legal quarrels, and to abandon all the schemes which he had formed for his nephew's advantage, leaving him entirely to his mother's authority.

Assuming a Catonian gravity, I pointed out to Mme. Balbi that she ought to waive her just claims and to stomach her natural resentment for the sake of her son. I firmly believed in my own soul that an ounce of sincere love was worth more than a hundred pounds of gold. Yet I reminded her that she was not in the position to make up to her boy for the loss of his uncle's property. This reasoning, which I regard as mere sophistry, but which the world accepts as irrefutable, made the lady burst into a flood of tears and then exclaim: "You are right! I am a poor woman, and should be condemned by everybody, perhaps even in the future by my own son. I am ready to sacrifice my rights; I will bury in my breast the stirrings of maternal love, the sense of insult and of injury, all that may prove prejudicial to the interests of my adored son, on whom I am unable to confer those benefits which lie within his uncle's power. Pray do me the further kindness of undertaking to explain the unalterable decision at which I have arrived."

I praised her virtuous resolution, and reported to the noble gentleman, her brother-in-law, from whom I have always received distinguished marks of politeness, the decision she had come to. In doing so, I attempted to draw a picture of her merits, and to maintain that her feelings were not merely excusable, but worthy of the highest commendation. The Cavaliere replied with some emotion: "You must not take me for a wild beast! I mean that the boy shall be visited by his mother, and looked after in all his wants, the charge of supplying which I take for the future on myself. I am quite willing to let her bring him back from time to time to dine with her, and only stipulate that her demonstrations of tenderness shall not interfere with his education and discipline." These solemn words of covenant having been exchanged, I was the instrument of separating the boy from his mother's embraces, and of conducting him to his appointed school. His behaviour on this occasion, in which firmness blent with filial emotion, made me feel sure that he was destined to reward his mother's virtues and his uncle's benevolence with conduct worthy of the highest honours of his country. Only death, which spared neither of his relatives, and which prevented them from reaping the fruits of their respective love and kindness, defeated these prognostications. The mother died twelve, and the uncle fifteen years after the events I have narrated. Young Balbi grew up to be an ornament, by his intellectual and moral qualities, by his probity and purity of manners, by his sympathy for the oppressed, and by his thoroughly national temper, to the Venetian Republic, in the administration of which his birth opened for him a career of usefulness and honour.

XXVIII.
I should not have believed what is narrated in this chapter, if I had not seen it with my own eyes.

Family jars and discords have this effect upon embittered minds that each member, wherever the wrong may really lie, is apt to think, not only that he is in the right, but that the right is absolutely and wholly on his side. For my part, I am not altogether sure that I was justified in doing what I did, and what I have described above with perfect candour.

I was aware that the theatrical speculation into which my brother had been induced to enter had taken a bad turn, and that worse might be expected in the future. A malignant and vindictive spirit would have found some satisfaction in these circumstances. As it was, I felt sincerely sorry, and flattered myself on being therefore free from malice. In proportion as things went from bad to worse, the rancour against myself increased, as though I had been responsible for an enterprise which I had always solemnly condemned by act and word.

I kept up relations with my brother's family, wishing to maintain the links of relationship unbroken, and to explain from time to time what I was doing for the common good. In spite of these demonstrations of a kindly feeling, which I admit were never very gushing, I saw to my deep regret that the wounds caused by the partition of our patrimony had not ceased to bleed.

The youngest of my sisters, Chiara by name, induced perhaps by some presentiment of coming trouble, asked me one day to take her under the protection of us three brothers. I cordially acceded to her request, and would have done the like by my mother and our two other sisters, had they not spurned the acceptance of what they had hitherto rejected as a great misfortune.

I told this youngest of my sisters that, our mother not being under my roof, my brother Francesco occupied with the estates in Friuli, Almorò a mere boy engaged in studies, and I absorbed in legal affairs for the common interests of the family, she could not with any propriety be left to the custody of a rough and stupid serving-woman. I therefore begged her to enter a convent for a while, until we should have changed our mode of living, and should be in a position to receive her more suitably and to take thought for her proper establishment. My sisters are neither foolish nor ill-natured. Chiara accepted my proposal, and was placed in the convent of S. Maria degli Angeli at Pordenone, as a young lady in charge of the Superior.

Any one exposed, as I was, to the rage of angry tongues, blackening me with the epithets of unjust, inhumane, tyrannical, marrying me against my will, and capable of insinuating the worst of charges against me for my guardianship of a sister, would act rightly if he took the precautions I did. Yet the precautions of the most prudent man on earth do not always bear the good results expected of them. I speak with experience derived from long study of ill-inclined men and worse-inclined women, who have invariably taken my unalterable good faith for venomous maliciousness.

I was excessively pained to observe that the bitterness created in my brother Gasparo's family by the events I have narrated remained unconquerable. It is true that they concealed, as far as possible, their grudge against me, whenever I paid them visits and treated them with brotherly good-will. This grudge, however, could not help showing itself in public; and it did so in a monstrous fashion, which I should not have credited unless I had been an eye-witness of the scandal.

My brothers and I were in the habit, during carnival-time, of frequently attending the theatre of S. Angelo, which was under the direction of my sister-in-law far rather than her husband. Amusement was less our object than the wish to support, so far as in us lay, a speculation to which we feared our brother had been sacrificed. We persuaded Mme. Ghellini Balbi to accompany us; and she entered into our designs by applauding as heartily as any of the audience.

They had given at this theatre a translation of the French comedy called Esop at the Court, which succeeded partly by the elegance of my brother's Italian version, and partly by its novelty. Rumour told us that the sequel, by the same French author, entitled Esop in the Town, was being translated and would soon appear. We were eager to be present at the first night, to back the piece with our approval, and to witness its triumph.

A worthy fellow, who aired his eloquence at Gasparo's house and also in our own, took me apart one day, and spoke with an air of secrecy and consternation to the following effect: "You must know that the forthcoming play of Esop in the Town will contain a scene, interpolated, not translated from the original, in which you, your brothers Francesco and Almorò, and Mme. Ghellini Balbi, are held up in a cruel satire to the public scorn. Do not let my name transpire; but take means to prevent this scandal; the comedy will be represented in five days from now." I was far from disbelieving that what my friend said was the truth; yet I took care to let no sign of my belief escape me. I thanked him for the friendly interest which had prompted him to warn me, but laughed the matter off as something beyond the range of possibility. He strained every nerve to convince me, but got nothing for his pains beyond smiles and ironical protestations of gratitude. I left him there fuming with anger at my obstinate hilarity.

I kept guard over my tongue in the presence of my brothers and the lady, and made a show of great anxiety to see the new play produced upon the boards. At last the first night came, and we all provided ourselves with a convenient box for the occasion. We were disappointed to find the theatre ill-attended, and to notice that the comedy dragged. Esop at the Court had caught the public by something piquant in its chief character, by his grotesque, crook-backed figure, and by the appropriate fables which had been written with real dramatic skill for the part. Esop in the Town was no less worthy of attention, but the novelty had evaporated; it seemed a plagiarism of the former piece, and wearied the audience like a composition which has lost its salt. At length the interpolated scene, of which my friend had warned me, came on.[142]

An ancient dame, attired in black, made her entrance, and unfolded the tale of her self-styled calamities to Esop. Pouring forth an interminable catalogue of woes, she enumerated all the lies which had been circulated against myself and Mme. Balbi at the period of our family dissensions. The ancient dame summed up by saying that she had been turned out of house and home, together with a loving son, three daughters, a daughter-in-law, and five grandchildren, by three of her own male children, the barbarous perverted offspring of her womb. Then she appealed with tears for counsel and advice to Esop, who expressed his sympathy in a frigidly elaborated fable. The ancient dame, attired in black, was an exact image of our poor mother, who had been blinded by a touch of spite against me and by the mud-honey of her favouritism into allowing herself to be exposed in this way on a public stage for the mirth of the populace.

The scene was very long; it had nothing to do with the action of the piece, having been foisted in to gratify a private animosity. The audience, ignorant of what it meant, began to yawn; and it contributed in no small measure to the failure of the play.

While this indecent and malignant episode was dragging its slow length along, I saw Mme. Ghellini Balbi becoming momently more taciturn and out of humour, my two brothers flaming into anger and preparing for some act of violence. The shouts of laughter with which I greeted this abortion of a satire added fuel to their fire, and Francesco, spurred by martial ardour, was on the point of defying the players. He only made me laugh the louder; but I had some difficulty in persuading my companions to quench their indignation in a cup of water, and to wrap themselves around with imperturbable indifference. They obeyed me. If we had made a disturbance, we should have put the cap on our own heads. As it was, our cold behaviour snuffed out the whole episode, without awaking anybody's interest. And such will, peradventure, be the fate of these Memoirs I am writing of my life.

In after days I was glad to have laughed at this indecent exhibition. The perusal of an anecdote in Ælian confirmed my self-congratulation. It was to the following effect. "When," says he, "a firm courageous spirit is attacked before the public in quizzical caricatures and gibing insults, these trifles vanish like mist before the wind; but if they meet with a nature which is base and proud and abject all at one and the same time, they fill it with melancholy and madness, which often lead it to the grave.[143] Take the proof of these remarks. Socrates, when he was ridiculed upon the public stage by Aristophanes, enjoyed the fun and laughed at it. Poliagros, under the same circumstances, went mad and hanged himself."

In concluding this episode, which I leave my readers to characterise with stronger epithets than I shall use, I wish to affirm that I never have believed, or can believe, that my brother Gasparo lent his pen or his assent to the production of the scene in question.

XXIX.
A disagreeable action at law brought against me.

While busily engaged in prosecuting my many lawsuits, I was unpleasantly surprised by the revival of my sister-in-law's old claim for reimbursement of monies expended by her in the management of our affairs during my father's lifetime.[144] This preposterous claim had long been lying dormant, and the better terms on which we were gradually coming to live together made me forget it as a chimera of the past.

My brother Gasparo's direction of the theatre of which he was the sole lessee bore such fruits as every one predicted. Instead of the pecuniary profits he had been encouraged to expect, the poor fellow was worried with vexatious and aggressive opposition, peculiarly trying to one of his gifts and temperament, but only too usual in enterprises of this kind.

Wounded pride and thirst for vengeance, together with the hideous necessity of meeting debts contracted in this unsuccessful speculation, were the causes which roused his wife to bring her alleged claims upon the family into a law-court. The defendants in this suit were myself and my two brothers Francesco and Almorò. It will be remembered that she had induced us to sign her cabalistic book of magic numbers with the sole object of freeing her from any possible pretensions upon our side. My elder brother, who had been the first to sign, in order to give a good example to his juniors, was not prosecuted by his wife.

Our legal advisers maintained, with some show of reason, that Gasparo was the real mover in this matter. For my part, knowing as I did his peaceful character, I felt certain, that though he was capable of countenancing irregularities through indolence and the desire to live a quiet life, he was incapable of stirring up litigious strife on such foundations. I was not ignorant that he had stooped to the theatrical speculation in order merely to escape from a vortex of domestic intrigues. I knew, moreover, that, after the partition of our patrimony, his wife and family had changed their residence at least six times, through restlessness, without informing him; so that he had gone to knock at empty house-doors, and had casually learned from neighbours in what quarter of the town his flighty brood had nested last. It also reached my ears that his wife was selling property upon his life, and that he had finally been driven by the tempest of his home to take a distant lodging of two rooms,[145] where he installed himself with his little heap of books and abandoned himself to study, seeking the peace he could not find. After all, the father of a family who flies domestic cares, only brings upon himself more carping cares than those which he has fled from. All these considerations put together enabled me to convince my counsel that Gasparo had no share in the proceedings of his wife.

In the pleadings which set forth my sister-in-law's cause, Signor Guseò, already named by me above, deposed on obviously false oath that he had been commissioned by us three brothers to examine her accounts, and that he had found her claim for reimbursement in the sum demanded to be just. To cut a long story short, our arguments upon the other side were useless. It was in vain that we expounded the inability of a woman who had entered our family without dowry, and had got the management of affairs into her hands through the indolence of its real head, to constitute herself its creditor; in vain that we denounced the collusion of one brother with his wife against the interests of three innocent brothers, who had been absent many years without burdening the estate; in vain that we showed how the father and the mother of the plaintiff had been received into our house and maintained for full fifteen years until their death, and how her relatives had been more the masters there than its legitimate owners; in vain that we brought forward the chaotic account-book, signed by us in compliance with our elder brother for the sole sake of calming troubled tempers; in vain that we pointed out figures, garbled, cancelled, altered in these precious documents; in vain that we offered to discharge sums due to creditors for money or goods rendered to the plaintiff in her administration of the family affairs. All these solid pleas were like words thrown to the winds before the impudence of two scoundrelly pettifoggers, the very scum of the Venetian law-courts, who managed to convince our sapient judges that men ought to open their eyes wide before they signed papers. From that moment until now, I have always read my letters through ten times before appending my signature.

As usual, I consoled myself by laughing over the inevitable. Nor did I dream of complaining to Francesco, who had drawn me into the affair by his desire to settle matters. He, good fellow, met my laughter with a sorry countenance, protesting that he could never have anticipated such an abominable trick of fortune.

Seven hundred ducats were passed to my sister-in-law's credit on the termination of this suit. They did my brother's family no good. Debts to comedians had eaten up the capital beforehand; and I was obliged to pay a set of hungry fellows with the consent of him and his wife. The annoyance, however, did not stop here. In order to bolster up her claim, my sister-in-law had raked together a multitude of soi-disant creditors, who pretended to have supplied money or goods to our family; and declarations signed by them, recognising her as their sole debtor, were put into court as evidence. When they found their expectations frustrated, the wasp's nest swarmed out against us three brothers, and sequestrated our house-property for payment of their alleged debts. Before I succeeded in finally shaking them off, I had to transact much tiresome business and to fight several lawsuits.

XXX.
A long and serious illness.—My recovery.—The doctors differ.—One of my sisters takes the veil.—Beginnings of literary squabbles, and other trifles.

In the midst of these annoyances, I found the time and strength to pursue my literary studies, especially in the now neglected art of poetry, and enjoyed excellent health; when suddenly, one night, a violent hemorrhage from the lungs warned me that the life of mortals hangs upon the frailest thread.

Bleeding, vegetable diet, and a frugality in food, which few, I think, are capable of continuing for as long a space of time as I can, together with my philosophical indifference to death, restored me to something like a tolerable state of health.

It seemed to me at this period that my two brothers and I, who always kept together, were in a position to settle down again into our paternal home. Mme. Ghellini Balbi, who had rented the house for more than five years, politely retired at my request, and found another habitation at S. Agostino. I furnished our ancestral nest as decently as I was able; and we were soon installed there. It was then that I invited my youngest sister to leave her convent and join us, travelling myself to Pordenone for this purpose.

Whether through weakness, or human influence, or Divine inspiration, I know not; but I found the good girl obstinate against my prayers, my anger, and my threats. She entreated with a holy stubbornness to be left in prison, to be indulged in her desire to pass her lifetime in that blessed aviary of virgins. I commanded her to come home for at least three or four months. At the end of that time, if she still persisted in her pious fanaticism, I promised to play the part of executioner at her request. She replied with a serious enthusiasm, which made me laugh, that she knew enough of the world to be experienced in its wickedness; and when I insisted, she met me with rather less than heavenly doggedness by remarking that nothing short of cutting her in pieces would make her quit the convent-gratings. Though I did not believe that this ultimatum was dictated by the angels, I bent my head in order to avoid a scandal. On taking the veil, she received those appointments and allowances which are usually bestowed upon the brides of Christ.

Were I to fix my thoughts upon the troubles which my four married sisters have had to suffer and still suffer—and I am only too well informed about them—I should be obliged to admit that the youngest chose the better part in life. They were always in straits, always weeping, with their gentle natures and their illimitable powers of endurance. One of them died before my eyes, to my deep sorrow, only because she was a wife. Meanwhile, the nun, beloved by her sisters, placidly smiled at things which we, refined in pleasures, finding nowhere solid pleasure for our satisfaction, would call barbarous tortures, and took delight in little treats, which we philosophers, past-masters in the arts of greed, are wont to scorn and turn our backs upon. In due course she attained the highest rank of Abbess in her convent; and I believe she was more gratified with this honour than Louis XVI. with his titles of King of France and of Navarre.[146]

Time had at length allayed the discords of our family. My two remaining sisters found husbands. My brother Gasparo obtained a post at the University of Padua, which brought him six hundred ducats a year, besides pecuniary gratifications for extraordinary services.[147] This proves that literature is not wholly unremunerated in Venice. In addition to these emoluments, he found another way, legitimate indeed, but one which seems incredible, for accumulating the sequins so much needed after his theatrical disaster. There was not a marriage, a taking of the veil among our noble families, an election of a Doge, or procurator, or grand chancellor, without my brother being engaged to produce the panegyrics or poems which are usual on such occasions—more sought perhaps by fashion than by studious readers. The patricians made it their custom to reward him with a hundred sequins, which contributed to the splendour of their families, but did him little good, for in his hands money found wings and flew away.

These details have little to do with my Memoirs; yet they are honourable to my nation, and are not without a certain bearing on my subject. Poetical trifles, published by me in collections, found favour by some aspect of novelty and by genial satire on contemporary fashions. Unluckily, they got me the reputation of a good poet and good writer. Accordingly, many of our lords tried to press me into the ranks of the Raccoglitori—collectors and compilers of occasional verse-books. They did not know that I had adopted for my motto that line of Berni:—

"Voleva far da se, non comandato."

"His master he would be, and no man's man."

Whenever they did me the honour to force this function on me, I civilly declined, and sent their messengers on to my brother, without, however, refusing compositions of my own, which swelled the collections, to their gain or loss as chance might have it.

I never abandoned the scheme I had formed of moving at law against the Marchese Terzi of Bergamo in a suit for the recovery of lands and rights belonging to us.[148] But while I was engaged on the preliminary business, a fresh attack of pulmonary hemorrhage cooled my ardour. Many learned physicians whom I consulted, looked upon me as a victim of consumption, at the point of death. Beggars in the street, when they saw me pass, promised to pray for my life if I would fling them a copper. The cleverest professors of medicine at Padua prescribed ass's milk, which was tantamount to saying: "Phthisical creature, go and make your peace with Heaven!" My own doctor in ordinary, Arcadio Cappello by name, now dead—an old man, experienced, well acquainted with my constitution, and a philosopher to boot—forbade me milk as though it had been poison. "You," he said, "are suffering from a nasty malady. Yet it has not the origin, nor has it made the progress, which these eminent physicians fancy. If you let your illness prey upon your mind, you will die. If you have the strength and heart to throw aside all thoughts about it, you will recover. It has in you no other basis than a hypochondriacal habit, which you have contracted by a sedentary life of worry, business, and excessive study. Raw milk of any kind is a pure poison in your case. Live regularly, cast aside reflections on your symptoms, take horse-exercise two or three hours a day. These are your best medicines."

Marchese Terzi owes no thanks to my malady. Bloodless as I was, through what I lost by hemorrhage and venesection, my intellect enjoyed the highest qualities of penetration and acumen. Stretched out upon my bed, I had the necessary papers for my lawsuit brought to me—abstracts and wills recovered from the pork-butcher—a whole paraphernalia of documents forbidden by my doctors—and set up a scheme of proofs and arguments, so clear and so convincing that they subsequently drove my enemy to desperate measures.

These annoying relapses of my malady continued for two years and a half to fall upon me when I least expected them. They were enough to dishearten any man less stupid than myself, and make him despair of living. Contrary to the advice of several physicians, who protested with wide-open horror-stricken eyes that riding would inflame my blood and burst the arteries of my lungs, I followed the prescription of Doctor Arcadio Cappello, half-suffocated as I was with hemorrhage. He proved to be right. Regular diet, contempt for my symptoms, and horse-exercise completed my cure. It is now twenty years and more since I have been reminded that I was ever subject to this indisposition.

As I have often had occasion to remark, no business, no quarrels, no lawsuits, and no illnesses prevented me from devoting some hours every day to poetry. This being the case, when controversies arose in Venice on philology and the higher Italian literature—controversies of which I mean to render some account in the following chapters—I went on vomiting blood from my veins, and scribbling sonnets, satires, essays in defence of our great writers, treatises on style, polemics against Chiari and Goldoni and their followers. All these trifles, when I read them aloud, made my friends laugh, as well as my doctor and the surgeon who attended on me.

Before engaging in the circumstances which led to my becoming a writer for the theatre, I will wind up the history of our private affairs. First of all, I let the lawsuit with Marchese Terzi drop. My reasons were as follows:—With the best intentions in the world, and the strongest desire to reunite the scattered members of our family under one roof, I found this task impossible. My sisters married. My brothers Francesco and Almorò in course of time took wives and begat children. My mother's inheritance of the Tiepolo property (though strictly speaking it ought to have been treated as entailed upon her sons) ran to waste in the hands of Gasparo and his wife. I had the old debts of our estate still weighing on my shoulders. It seemed to me, in this condition of affairs, best to remain a bachelor, and to devote myself to the duties I had undertaken, without ambitious projects and without assuming heavier obligations. Freed from further responsibilities to my family, whom I had loyally served in their material interests, and against none of whom I harboured any rancour, I was master of my time and could devote myself to the literary exercises which were so congenial to my temper.

END OF VOL. I.

PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE, HANSON AND CO.
EDINBURGH AND LONDON.

The following typographical errors have been corrected by the etext transcriber:

Many years have elasped since Tartaglia married=>Many years have elapsed

since Tartaglia married

twirls his moustachioes=>twirls his moustachios

Philarete Chasles=>Philarète Chasles

whence we were to sally forth to the assault of Buda.=>whence we were to

sally forth to the assault of Budua.

INDEX.

This index appears at the end of Volume 2, but is shown here for the convenience of the reader.

{note of etext transcriber}

[A], [B], [C], [D], [E], [F], [G], [H], [I], [L], [M], [N], [P], [Q], [R], [S], [T], [V], [W], [Z]

Academy de' Granelleschi, at Venice, i. 89, 99.
Actors, Italian, their character, ii. [137].
Actresses, Italian, their character, ii. [137].
Agazi, Francesco, Censor of Plays, ii. [264], [268].
Albergati, Marchese Francesco, ii. 240;
notes on his career, ii. 240 note 1.
Altissimo, Cristoforo, poet and improvisatore, i. 202.
"Amore delle Tre Melarancie," Gozzi's first Fiaba, i. 109; ii. [129], [133].
translation of, i. 112-146.
its triumphant success, i. 146, 147; ii. [130].
his best Fable, artistically, i. 163.
Andreini, Francesco, a celebrated actor, i. 51.
Andrich, Carlo, ii. [76].
Angaran, Zorzi, Avogadore, i. 13.
Angarano, Count Galeaso, i. 341.
Apergi, Lieutenant Giovanni, i. 227; ii. [16].
Aretino, Pietro, i. 29.
Arlecchino, i. 35,
description of, in the Commedia dell'Arte, i. 46.
"Augellino Belverde," one of Gozzi's "Fiabe," analysis of, i. 164-176.
Bada, Gianbattista, i. 100 note 2.
Balbi, Benedetto, Canon of Padua, i. 349-352.
Balbi, Countess Elisabetta Ghellini, see Ghellini Balbi, Countess.
Balbi, Paolo, i. 349-352; ii. [89], [295].
his sudden death, ii. [326].
Balestra, Antonio, painter, ii. [342].
Baretti, Giuseppe, his opinion of Gozzi, i. 179.
Barsanti, Domenico, actor, ii. [216], [323].
Bartoli, Adolfo, his "Scenari Inediti," i. 57.
Bartoli, Francesco, husband of Teodora Ricci, ii. 195 note 1, 249-252.
his ill-health and separation from his wife, ii. [199].
Battagia, Maddalena, actress, ii. [174].
Benedetti, Luigi, actor, ii. [209], [269], [288].
Beolco, Angelo, a Paduan writer of simple rustic comedies, i. 33.
Bergalli, Luisa Pisana, wife of Gasparo Gozzi, see Gozzi, Luisa Pisana.
Bettinelli, Abbé Xavier, his attempted revolution in literary taste, ii. [104].
shown up by the Granelleschi, ii. [105].
Bevilacqua, Doctor Bartolommeo, ii. [314].
Boldù, Jacopo, Provveditore Generale di Dalmazia, i. 276.
Borrommeo, Carlo, his crusade against the Comedians, i. 70.
Bragadino, Cavaliere, the curious occurrence that earned Gozzi his friendship, ii. 80-84.
Brescia, Bishop of, i. 277.
Brighella, i. 35; description of, in the Commedia dell'Arte, i. 47.
as employed by Gozzi, i. 152.
Burchiello, an obscure Florentine poet, ii. [116].
Calogerà, Padre, ii. [117].
Canale, or Canaletti, Antonio, ii. [338].
his defects, ii. [338].
Canziani, Maria, dancer, ii. [75].
Capitano, the, a character in the Commedia dell'Arte, i. 35, 50.
Capocomico, manager of the Comedians, his functions, i. 58-60, 64.
Cappello, Arcadio, physician, i. 368.
Casali, Gaetano, comedian, i. 112 note 1.
Casanova, Ignazio, comedian, i. 112 note 1.
Casanova, Jacques, i. 4, 73, 350 note 1; ii. 99 note 1.
Cavalli, Jacopo, Provveditore Generale di Dalmazia, i. 220.
Cecchi, playwright, i. 33.
Cenet, Madame Jeanne Sarah, ii. [310].
Cerlone, Francesco, poet, i. 35 note 3.
fixed the type of Pulcinella, i. 49.
Chasles, Philarete, i. 181.
Chaussée, Nivelle de la, his sentimental comedies, i. 87.
Chiari, Abbé Pietro, playwright, i. 2.
his rivalry with Goldoni, i. 97.
Gozzi's attacks on, i. 99.
makes common cause with Goldoni against Gozzi, i. 106, ii. [127].
various satirical allusions to him in Gozzi's first "Fable," i. 112-146.
his popularity in Venice, ii. [110].
Gozzi's opinion of, ii. [113], [114].
defeated by Gozzi, gives up play-writing, i. 177, ii. [155], [156].
Cicucci, Regina, actress, ii. [170].
Colombani, Paolo, bookseller, his shop the headquarters of the Granelleschi, ii. [127].
Colombo, Giovanni, i. 229.
Grand Chancellor of the Venetian Republic, i. 230.
Comedian, qualifications of a good Italian, i. 61.
Comedians, their degraded social position, i. 70.
Comedy, Italian—
Its origin during the Renaissance, i. 26.
its dependence on Latin models, i. 26, 28.
the Commedia Erudita, i. 27, 39.
the first attempts at National Italian comedy, i. 28.
its stock characters, i. 28.
Commedia dell'Arte all'Improviso, its causes, and its distinctive features, i. 30-32.
its great antiquity, i. 32.
its relation to the Commedia Erudita, i. 32, 55.
farces in relation to the Commedia dell'Arte, i. 33.
the Commedia dell'Arte trusted to the improvisatory talent of the actors, i. 34.
the actors in it wore masks, i. 34.
the principal masks—Pantalone, Il Dottore, Arlecchino, Brighella, i. 34.
description of the masks, i. 43-54.
the less important masks, i. 52.
relation of the Commedia dell'Arte to the old Latin comedy of mimes and exodia, i. 36-40.
Lombard, Neapolitan, and Florentine ingredients in it, i. 40.
its culmination and decay, i. 43.
modifications introduced into the fixed characters of the Commedia dell'Arte by celebrated actors, i. 53.
the plots and subjects of improvised comedies, i. 54.
its indecency and buffoonery, i. 56.
description of the scenari of the comedies, i. 56.
how they were arranged or rehearsed, i. 58.
qualifications of the actors, i. 61.
stock speeches, which were not left to the inspiration of the comedians, but were written, i. 62.
lazzi (sallies of buffoonery), i. 63.
its tendency to degenerate, i. 64, 69.
the widespread popularity of the Commedia dell'Arte, i. 65.
its success in Paris, Spain, Portugal, and London, i. 65, 67.
probably the model on which Tarleton and Wilson formed their Drolls, i. 68.
Gozzi's praise of it, i. 68.
its decadence, i. 69, 87.
the degraded social position of the actors, i. 70.
Garzoni's description of the strolling comedians, i. 73-80.
superseded by the Comédie Larmoyante, i. 87.
Gozzi's "Fiabe Teatrali," an attempt to rehabilitate the impromptu comedy, i. 109.
translation of Gozzi's first "Fiaba," i. 112-146.
character of the actors in Italian Comedy, ii. [137].
Commedia dell'Arte. See Comedy, Italian.
Comparetti, Doctor Andrea, ii. [300].
Contarini, Francesco, Gratarol's uncle, ii. [292], [293].
Coralli, actor, ii. [201], [208], [214].
Cornaro, Giorgio, physician, ii. [327].
Cortigiani, the Venetian, or Men of the World, i. 294 note 1.
Coviello, a mask in the Commedia dell'Arte, i. 50.
Crespi, Giuseppe Maria, ii. [342].
Dalmatia, the character of the natives of, i. 238.
the women of, i. 242.
the nature of the country, i. 243.
Danieli, chief physician to the Provveditore di Dalmazia, i. 222.
Da Ponte, Lorenzo, i. 4.
Darbes, Cesare, comedian, i. 95, 112 note 1; ii. [131], [169].
Della Bona, Professor, ii. [310].
his skilful treatment of Gasparo Gozzi's illness, ii. [316].
Despériers, Bonaventura, ii. 7 note 1.
Dialects, different, spoken in the Commedia dell'Arte, i. 35.
Dolfin-Tron, Caterina, i. 11; ii. [264], [287], [312].
her character and influence, i. 9.
her enmity towards Gratarol, i. 9.
ruins Gratarol, i. 12, 13.
Gratarol's "Narrazione" bitterly attacks her, i. 13.
Gozzi's relations with, ii. 266 note 1.
Gozzi intercedes with her to have "Le Droghe d'Amore" stopped, ii. [288].
her refusal, ii. [290].
Gozzi shows her how he has been insulted by Gratarol, ii. [208].
her interest in Gasparo Gozzi, ii. [308].
Doti—stock passages in the Commedia dell'Arte which were not left to improvisation, i. 62; ii. [144].
Dottore, the, a character in the Commedia dell'Arte, i. 34.
description of, i. 45.
"Droghe d'Amore, Le," Gozzi's comedy which caused the quarrel between Gratarol and Gozzi, i. 10; ii. [225], [252].
licensed for the stage, ii. [259].
the cast changed by the actors in order to attack Gratarol, ii. [260], [269].
read to the actors, ii. [260].
Gratarol's foolish conduct forces the piece on the stage, and makes all Venice talk of it, ii. [263].
its production, ii. [270].
the excitement it causes, ii. [274].
Gratarol's distress at its success, ii. [277].
Gozzi's efforts to have it stopped, ii. 286-294.
Drousiano, an Italian comedian in London in 1577-8, i. 67.
" Esop in the Town," a play in which Gozzi and the Countess Balbi were attacked, i. 356.
Farces, popular during the Renaissance, i. 33.
Farsetti, Daniele, Gozzi dedicates his "Tartana degl' influssi" to, ii. [116].
Farsetti, Giuseppe, ii. [124].
"Fiabe Teatrali," Gozzi's celebrated plays, i. 107; ii. 129-137.
an endeavour to rehabilitate the Commedia dell'Arte, i. 109.
success of his first Fable, i. 146, 147.
list of the remaining nine Fables, i. 148.
critical account of, i. 148-176.
the sources of, i. 162.
their success but ephemeral, i. 178.
Fiorelli, Agostino, comedian, i. 112 note 1; ii. [131], [169].
Fiorelli, Tiberio of Naples, the famous Scaramouch, i. 51, 53.
his wonderful acting described, i. 66.
Florentine burlesque poets, Gozzi's true ancestors in art, i. 110.
Florentine ingredients in the Commedia dell'Arte, i. 40.
Foscarini, Marco, Doge of Venice, i. 337.
Galante, avvocato fiscale dell'Avogaderia, i. 13.
Garzoni, his description of the strolling comedians, in his "Piazza Universale," i. 73-80.
Generici—or common-places—in the Commedia dell'Arte, i. 62.
Ghellini Balbi, Countess Elisabetta, i. 324, 338, 342, 355, 365.
her interest in the Gozzi family, i. 324.
Gozzi calls upon her, i. 325.
Gozzi reported to be married to her, i. 339, 349.
her anxieties about her son, i. 349-352.
attacked in a play called "Esop in the Town," i. 356.
Gherardi, his "Theatre Italien," i. 61, 66.
Goethe, his estimate of Goldoni and Gozzi, i. 178.
Goldoni, Carlo, dramatist, i. 2, 4, 87.
his severe condemnation of the Italian Comedy, i. 72.
his undoubted genius, i. 89.
his excellent character, i. 89.
his qualities and defects, i. 89-91.
sketch of his career, i. 92.
his desire to reform Italian Comedy, i. 93.
the steps which he took in that direction, i. 93-95.
joins the company of Medebac, i. 95.
his first comedy of character, as opposed to impromptu comedy, i. 95.
the fortunes of his crusade against the Commedia dell'Arte, i. 95; ii. [128].
his contest with Chiari, i. 97.
Gozzi's hatred for him as a corrupter of the language, i. 99.
Gozzi's first attack on him, i. 99; ii. [116].
his reply to Gozzi, i. 101; ii. [117].
the long-continued warfare between him and Gozzi, i. 102; ii. 119-128
Chiari makes common cause with him against Gozzi, i. 106; ii. [127].
various satirical allusions to him in Gozzi's first "Fable," i. 112-146.
defeated by Gozzi, goes to Paris, i. 177; ii. [155], [156].
his ultimate success and fame, i. 178.
his popularity in Venice, ii. [110].
Gozzi's opinion of him, ii. 111-113.
his superiority over Chiari, ii. [114].
the various publications in which Gozzi attacked him, ii. 119-128.
himself writes a "Fable," ii. [150].
his similarity in art with Longhi the painter, ii. [350].
Gozzi family, i. 185;
Cittadini Originari of Venice, i. 186.
Gozzi, Almorò, younger brother of Carlo, i. 290, 320, 329, 330, 331, 354; ii. [79], [162].
Gozzi, Angela Tiepolo, mother of Carlo, i. 189, 285, 304.
her maladministration of the family affairs, i. 297.
her quarrels with Carlo Gozzi, i. 304.
her dislike for Carlo, i. 348.
Gozzi, Carlo—
his autobiography, entitled "Memorie inutili della vita di Carlo Gozzi." i. 1.
design of his autobiography, i. 3, 19;
its value historically, i. 4.
his "Droghe d'Amore" supposed to contain a caricature of Gratarol. i. 10.
attacked by Gratarol in his "Narrazione Apologetica, i. 14.
writes a reply—"Epistola Confutatoria," i. 14;
but is not allowed to publish it, i. 15.
publishes his memoir and, under provocation, the "Epistola Confutatoria," after the fall of the Venetian republic, i. 16-19.
his autobiography, its form, its merits and defects, and its reliability, i. 19-24.
his personal characteristics, i. 22.
his "Fiabe," i. 43.
his eulogy of the Commedia dell'Arte, i. 68.
his description of the contest between Goldoni and Chiari, i. 98.
translation of his first Fable, i. 112-146.
its triumphant success, i. 146, 147.
his other "Fiabe," i. 148.
critical account of his "Fiabe Teatrali, i. 148-176.
his use of the Masks, i. 149-154.
his mixture of the comic element with the fairy-tale, i. 154.
not a great imaginative poet, i. 156.
his merits as a playwright, i. 157-160.
his conservative philosophy of life, i. 160.
the sources of his "Fiabe," i. 162.
analysis of "L'Augellino Belverde," i. 164-176.
his victory over Goldoni and Chiari, i. 176.
his fame ephemeral, i. 178.
German translation of his plays, i. 180.
his pedigree, i. 2, 185-190.
his birth, i. 190 note 1.
the exact trustworthiness of his Memoirs, i. 190 note 1.[I?]
his brothers and sisters, i. 191.
his education, i. 192.
injures his health by study, i. 196.
his endeavours after a good literary style, i. 197.
his moral and physical training, i. 200, 205.
his acting as a child, i. 201.
shows skill as an improvisatore, i. 202.
his first poetical productions, i. 205-207.
his early productions, i. 208.
the family difficulties, i. 209.
the discomforts of his home, i. 212.
he leaves home and becomes a soldier, i. 213.
his first experiences as a soldier, i. 214-221.
has a dangerous illness, i. 221.
studies Fortification, i. 225.
his love of poetry, i. 229.
his sonnet in praise of Provveditore Quirini, i. 233.
an exciting adventure with a horse, i. 234.
he is enrolled as a Cadet noble of cavalry, i. 246.
what his military services amounted to, i. 247.
his success as a soubrette in the military theatricals at Zara, i. 249-251.
some of his escapades as a youth, i. 252-273.
the adventures in connection with the courtesan Tonina, i. 262-272.
his finances at the close of his military service, i. 273.
returns to Venice, i. 278.
the state of his family and home, when he returns, i. 279.
his first meeting with his family, i. 284.
his difficulty in interfering in the management of the family affairs, i. 290.
his negotiations with Francesco Zini, i. 300.
becomes the object of hatred to all his family, i. 307, 318.
in continual quarrels with his family, i. 322.
his interview with the Countess Ghellini Balbi, i. 325.
his family set the law in motion against him, i. 328.
he leaves home, i. 330.
lies spread about him, i. 331.
the family property divided, i. 332.
is dragged into tedious lawsuits, i. 334-342.
his friendship with the Countess Ghellini Balbi, i. 339, 349.
his sister-in-law's vexatious lawsuit against him, i. 360-364.
has violent hæmorrhage from the lungs, i. 364, 368.
his illnesses and occupations, i. 370.
his account of his own physical and mental qualities, ii. 1-9.
accepted no payment for any of his works, ii. [3].
his love-tales—
his first love, ii. 11-27;
his second love, ii. 28-33;
his third love, ii. 33-69.
his reflections on his love affairs, ii. [69].
his object in relating them, ii. 72 note 1.
the absurdities and contrarieties to which his star made him subject, ii. 73-89.
his unfortunate experience as a landlord, ii. 85-89.
the origin and progress of his literary quarrels, i. 2; ii. [90].
his views upon Italian literature, ii. [91].
his dissertation on Prejudice, ii. [99].
his humorous attack on Bettinelli, ii. [106].
the motives of his attacks upon Chiari and Goldoni, ii. [115].
his first attack on Goldoni and Chiari in his "Tartana degli Influssi," i. 100, 109; ii. [116].
Goldoni's reply, i. 101, 109; ii. [117].
his Aristophanic satire upon Goldoni, entitled "Il Teatro Comico," i. 104, 109; ii. [120].
he withdraws this satire at Goldoni's request, i. 106; ii. [124].
the origin of his celebrated "Fiabe Teatrali," i. 107; ii. [128].
his first Fable, "The Love of the Three Oranges (L'Amore delle Tre Melarancie)," i. 109; ii. [129].
the various publications in which he carried on the war against Goldoni and Chiari, ii. 119-128.
his relations with Sacchi's company of comedians, ii. 137-155.
his tuition of the actresses, ii. [145].
his lawsuit against the Marchese Terzi, ii. [160].
its successful issue, ii. [164].
he withdraws his aid temporarily from Sacchi's company, ii. [166].
comes to their assistance again, ii. [168].
undertakes to tutor Teodora Ricci, ii. [177].
the successful result of his tuition, ii. [185].
his defence of his character and conduct in connection with Teodora Ricci, and the actresses of Sacchi's company, ii. 187, 192 note 1.
becomes Cicisbeo to Ricci, i. 9; ii. [193].
is godfather to her child, ii. [198].
his troublous relations with the Ricci, ii. [200].
his excuse for submitting to the worries caused by the Ricci, ii. [218].
his adaptations of Spanish plays, ii. [225].
his "Droghe d'Amore," i. 10; ii. [225].
his and Gratarol's versions of the quarrel between them, ii. 229 note 1.
Gratarol's first visit to him, ii. [238].
his final rupture with Ricci, ii. [246].
annoyed by her, ii. [249], [255].
annoyed by her husband, ii. [250].
completes his comedy "Le Droghe d'Amore," ii. [252].
is pestered into giving it to Sacchi, ii. [258].
his innocence of an intention to caricature Gratarol in "Le Droghe d'Amor," ii. [258].
reads the piece to the actors, ii. [260].
tries to have it withdrawn, ii. [263].
his friendship with Madame Dolfin Tron, ii. 266 note 1.
forbidden by the Censor to withdraw his play, ii. [268].
his distress at the play's vogue, ii. [274].
waited on by Carlo Maffei on behalf of Gratarol, ii. [277].
interview between him and Gratarol, ii. 279-285.
his futile efforts to have the play stopped, ii. 286-294.
his further squabbles with Gratarol, ii. [294].
his cause espoused by the Supreme Tribunal, which forces Gratarol to apologise to him, ii. [303].
Gratarol's conduct to him subsequently, ii. [307].
goes to Padua, where his brother Gasparo lies dangerously ill, ii. [309].
uses his influence in Gratarol's behalf, ii. [319].
his reflection on Gratarol's flight, ii. [321].
his last interview with Sacchi, ii. [324].
his sorrow at the death of his friends, ii. [325].
has a bad attack of fever, ii. [327].
lays down his pen, ii. [330].
a review of his life and an estimate of his character, ii. [330].
his old age, ii. [332].
his will, ii. [333].
his death, ii. [337].
Gozzi, Chiara, sister of Carlo, i. 354.
becomes a nun, i. 365.
Gozzi, Francesco, brother of Carlo, i. 319, 320, 329, 354; ii. [79], [162].
becomes a soldier, i. 212.
his bad character, i. 321.
his death, ii. [326].
Gozzi, Gasparo, grandfather of Carlo, i. 189.
Gozzi, Gasparo, brother of Carlo, i. 282, 286, 288, 293, 312, 320, 329; ii. [301], [319].
his personal leaning towards Goldoni, i. 106.
undertakes to superintend a new edition of Goldoni's plays, i. 177.
his passion for study, i. 194.
his marriage, i. 209.
becomes lessee of the theatre of S. Angelo at Venice, i. 332.
his helpless position in his own house, i. 340.
his theatrical speculation is unsuccessful, i. 353, 360.
Carlo Gozzi and the Countess Balbi attacked on his stage, i. 357.
obtains a post at the University of Padua, i. 367.
his "Defence of Dante" against the Abbé Bettinelli, ii. [106].
his lack of spirit, ii. [162].
his friendship with Madame Dolfin Tron, ii. [267].
his serious illness, ii. [308].
in his delirium throws himself from a window, ii. [308].
his recovery, ii. [317].
his death, ii. [327].
Gozzi, Girolama, i. 288.
Gozzi, Giulia, i. 282.
Gozzi, Jacopo Antonio, father of Carlo, i. 188.
has a stroke of apoplexy, i. 211.
his feeble state of health, i. 284.
the unhappiness of his position amid the family quarrels, i. 309.
his death, i. 310.
Gozzi, Luisa Pisani Bergalli, wife of Gasparo, i. 210.
the ruler of the Gozzi family affairs, i. 287.
her mismanagement, i. 299, 317.
her dishonourable conduct, i. 319, 328.
tries to manage her husband's theatre, i. 332.
brings a lawsuit against Carlo, i. 360-364.
Gozzi, Marina, sister of Carlo, i. 201, 282.
Gradenigo, Cavaliere Andrea, ii. [76].
Grampo, Contessa Emilia, i. 189.
Granelleschi, Academy of the, i. 89, 99, 102.
its warfare with Goldoni and Chiara, i. 102.
the founding of the Academy, ii. [93].
its burlesque Prince, ii. [93].
its more serious objects, ii. [97], [108].
its attack on the Abbé Bettinelli, ii. [105].
its headquarters in the shop of the bookseller, Paolo Colombani, ii. [127].
Gratarol, Pier Antonio, i. 359 note 1; ii. 10, 72 note 1, 79, 227, 263.
his quarrel with Gozzi, i. 2, 6.
account of his life, i. 7-16.
nominated as Venetian Resident at Naples, i. 8.
his quarrel with Caterina Dolfin Tron, i. 9.
becomes lover to Teodora Ricci, i. 10; ii. [229].
his version of his quarrel with Gozzi compared with Gozzi's statement, ii. 229 note 1.
his presence behind the scenes of Sacchi's theatre, ii. [230], [233].
his entertainment to the actors and actresses, ii. [237].
his first visit to Gozzi, ii. [238].
Ricci compromised by him, ii. [242].
caricatured in "Le Droghe d'Amore," but not by Gozzi's wish, i. 10; ii. [258], [259].
his foolish conduct forces the piece on the stage, ii. [263].
is present on its production and sees himself caricatured, ii. [272].
his distress, ii. 275 note 1, 277.
his intrigues against Gozzi, ii. [278].
his interview with Gozzi, ii. 279-285.
Gozzi's efforts to have the play stopped, ii. 286-294.
the further squabbles between him and Gozzi, ii. 294-300.
forced by the Supreme Authority to apologise to Gozzi, ii. [303].
his own account of the letter which he was forced to write, ii. 303 note 1.
his conduct to Gozzi subsequently, ii. [307].
suspected of having the actor Vitalba assaulted, ii. [319].
his appointment to Naples cancelled, ii. [319], [320].
his withdrawal from Venice and consequent outlawry, i. 12; ii. [321].
his "Narrazione Apologetica" published at Stockholm, i. 13.
published at Venice after the fall of the Republic, i. 16.
his death, i. 16.
book entitled "Last Notices regarding Pietro Antonio Gratarol," i. 17.
Gozzi's reflections on his character, ii. [321].
Grazzini, Anton-Francesco, his Carnival song of the Zanni and Magnifichi, i. 41.
Gritti, Francesco, ii. [76].
his play of Gustavus Vasa, ii. [184].
Guardi, Francesco, ii. [338].
the interest of his paintings historically, ii. [340].
Gusèo, Giovannantonio, a notary, i. 347, 362.
Hoffmann, E. T. W., his enthusiasm for Gozzi, i. 181.
Hogarth, William, contrasted with Pietro Longhi, ii. [350].
Illyria, the nature of the country, i. 244.
Improvisation, Gozzi's views on, i. 202.
I Rozzi, a company at Siena, who performed farces, i. 33.
Italian Comedy. See Comedy, Italian.
Italian Literature, ii. [91].
Lami, Signor, ii. [117].
Laveleye, Emil de, ii. 99 note 1.
Lazari, V., ii. 347 note 1, 353 note 1.
Lazzi—or humorous sallies—in the Commedia dell'Arte, i. 63.
Lee, Vernon, i. 23, 182.
Lombard ingredients in the Commedia dell'Arte, i. 40.
Longhi, Alessandro, son of Pietro, ii. [346], [357].
Longhi, Pietro, ii. 338-361.
the interest of his works, ii. 338 note 1, 341, 347.
his parentage, ii. [342].
his early training, ii. [342].
his Fall of the Giants, ii. [343].
finds his true vocation as a painter in studies of contemporary Venetian life, ii. [344].
the difference in his handiwork, ii. [346].
his similarity in art with Goldoni the dramatist, ii. [350].
the strong contrast between him and Hogarth, ii. [350].
his portrait, ii. [351].
filled the Chair of Painting in the Pisani Academy, ii. [353].
a picture representing the Pisani family attributed to him, ii. [354].
frescoes in the Palazzo Sina attributed to him, ii. [356].
his sketch-book, a collection of 140 drawings, ii. [357].
its great value, ii. [357].
description of its contents, ii. [358].
its merits and its limitations, ii. [358], [359].
summary of his work, ii. [360].
Loredano, Cavaliere Antonio, i. 212.
Machiavelli, Niccolò, i. 29.
Maffei, Carlo—
account of his character, ii. [276].
his intervention on Gratarol's behalf in the dispute regarding the "Droghe d'Amore," ii. 277-285.
his sudden death, ii. [326], [327].
Manzoni, Caterina, actress, ii. [170].
her excellent qualities, ii. [192].
Marchiori, Cavaliere, Lieutenant-Colonel of Engineers, i. 225.
Gozzi studies Fortification under, i. 225.
his death, i. 228.
Marsili, Professor Giovanni, ii. [308].
Martelli, Pier Jacopo, i. 97 note 1.
Martellian verses, i. 97 note 1.
Masi, Ernesto, i. 99 note 1.
Masks, the, as employed by Gozzi, i. 149.
Massimo, Innocenzio, i. 226, 227, 278, 326; ii. [28], [162].
his friendship with Gozzi, i. 223, 283.
his character, i. 224.
a foolish adventure, i. 254-260.
his generous kindness to Gozzi, i. 312.
his sudden death, ii. [327].
Medebac (master of a company of comedians), engages Goldoni to write for his company, i. 95.
Messer Grande, the Chief Constable of Venice, ii. 89 note 1.
Micheli, Maggiore della Provincia, i. 218.
Montenegrins, the women of the, i. 241.
Morlacchi, a tribe of Dalmatians, i. 237 note 1.
their barbarism, i. 237, 239.
Musset, Paul de, his travesty of Gozzi's real character, i. 23, 24 note 1, 181, ii. 89 note 2.
Neapolitan ingredients in the Commedia dell'Arte, i. 40.
Pallone, the game of, i. 251 note 1.
Pantalone, i. 34; description of, in the Commedia dell'Arte, i. 43.
as employed by Gozzi, i. 152.
Paruta, the Patrician, Gozzi mistaken for, ii. [74].
Perrucci, Andrea, his description of the rehearsal of an impromptu comedy, i. 58.
Pisani family, their Academy for the Study of the Art of Design, ii. [353].
Pozzobon, Giovanni, i. 100 note 2.
Prata, Count Michele di, i. 282.
Prejudice, Gozzi's dissertation on, ii. [99].
Provveditore Generale di Dalmazia, the office of, i. 212 note 1.
Provveditore Generale di Mare, the head of the Venetian forces in the Levant, i. 212 note 1.
Pulcinella, i. 35;
description of, i. 49.
Punch (Pulcinella), i. 50.
Quirini, Girolamo, Provveditore di Dalmazia, i. 213, 216, 247, 277, 278.
the town of Zara gives a grand public display in his honour, i. 230.
Gozzi presents a volume of his poems to him, i. 276.
Regina, the actress engaged by Sacchi to fill Ricci's place, ii. [254].
Renier, Paolo, ii. [301], [305].
his brilliant abilities, and his career, ii. 301 note 1, 306 note 1.
Reniero, Senator Daniele, i. 341.
Ricci, Marianna, sister of Teodora, ii. [242].
Ricci, Teodora, ii. [174], [324].
engaged as leading actress by Sacchi, ii. [174].
her personal appearance, ii. [175].
her connection with Gozzi, i. 9.
her connection with Gratarol, i. 10.
Gozzi's tuition of, ii. 177
the opposition to her, ii. [179].
her début at Venice not very successful, ii. [182].
her success in "Gustavus Vasa," ii. [184].
her triumph in Gozzi's "Principessa Filosofa," ii. [185].
her gratitude to Gozzi, ii. [186].
her merits and defects, ii. 188-192.
Gozzi becomes her Cicisbeo, ii. [193].
Gozzi is godfather to her child, ii. [198].
her separation from her husband, ii. [199].
her liaison with Sacchi, ii. 202-210.
her foolish conduct, ii. [216].
her rapacity, ii. [221].
her agreement for five years with Sacchi, ii. [221].
her friendship with P. A. Gratarol, ii. [227], [241].
its consequences, ii. [242].
Gozzi's final rupture with her, ii. [246].
her annoyance of him, ii. [249], [255].
she leaves Sacchi's company and goes to Paris, ii. [254].
her strange manners when she returns, ii. [256].
her failure as an actress when she began to ape the French, ii. [257].
her conduct at the reading of "Le Droghe d'Amore," ii. [260].
her foolish conduct in connection with the play, ii. [269], [275].
pretends illness in order to stop the play, ii. [275].
is ordered to play by the authorities, ii. [276].
her tactics which led to the withdrawal of "Le Droghe d'Amore," ii. [306].
her death in a madhouse, ii. 195 note 1.
Riccoboni, Luigi, i. 63.
"Riflessioni d'un Imparziale," a pamphlet in answer to Gratarol's "Narrazione," i. 13 note 2, 15 note 1.
Rossi, Pietro, actor, ii. [189].
Royer, Paul, i. 182.
Ruskin, John, ii. [340].
Sacchi, Antonia, actress, i. 112 note 1.
Sacchi, Antonio, i. 53, 100, 101, 112 note 1, 150; ii. 201, 262, 272, 282 note 1, 286, 297, 306, 318.
list of his company, i. 112 note 1.
allusion to his company in Gozzi's first "Fable," i. 127.
the inventor of Truffaldino as a form of Arlecchino, ii. 131 note 1.
his famous company, ii. [142].
ruined by the opposition of Chiari and Goldoni, ii. [132].
their visit to Lisbon, ii. [132].
their return to Venice, ii. [132].
their success with Gozzi's pieces, i. 176; ii. [132].
their gratitude to Gozzi, ii. [137].
Gozzi temporarily withdraws his aid from his company, ii. [166].
obtains a lease of the theatre S. Salvadore, ii. [167], [168].
his passion for the Ricci, ii. [202], [214].
his ill-treatment of her, ii. [207].
its result, ii. 208-210.
his theatre pronounced unsafe, ii. [219].
his five years' agreement with Ricci, ii. [221].
his difficulties with Gratarol, ii. [233].
Ricci leaves his company and he engages Regina in her place, ii. [254].
consents to withdraw the "Droghe d'Amore," ii. [263].
produces it, ii. [271].
the dissolution of his company, ii. [322].
his excesses and tempers, ii. [322].
his last interview with Gozzi, ii. [324].
his death, ii. 325 note 1.
Sacchi-Zannoni, Adriana, actress, i. 112 note 1; ii. [131].
Sacchi's company—
its respectability, ii. [143].
Gozzi's relations with the actors and actresses, ii. 137-155.
dissensions in, ii. [164].
the details of its dissolution, ii. 322-325.
Santorini, Count Francesco, i. 324, 327, 329.
Schlegel, A. W., his praise of Gozzi's "Fiabe," i. 180.
Sciugliaga, Stefano, Secretary of the University of Milan, ii. [198].
Sechellari, Giuseppe, Prince of the Accademia Granellesca, ii. [93].
the tricks played on him, ii. [95].
Seghezzi, Antonio Federigo, i. 199.
Servetta, the, a character in the Commedia dell'Arte, i. 48, 154.
Sibiliato, Giovanni, a wonderful improvisatore and a true poet, i. 204.
Smeraldina (Servetta), as employed by Gozzi, i. 154.
Somascan Order of Monks, i. 350 note 1.
Stampa, Gaspara, poetess, i. 206.
Stock speeches in the Commedia dell'Arte, i. 62.
Tartaglia, a mask in the Commedia dell'Arte, i. 35, 50.
as employed by Gozzi, i. 152.
Terzi, Marchese, of Bergamo, i. 368, 369, 370.
Gozzi's lawsuit against, ii. [160].
its successful issue, ii. [164].
Testa, Antonio, a famous lawyer, i. 335; ii. [163].
his kindness to Gozzi, i. 336.
Theatres, private, in the houses of the Venetian nobility, i. 201 note 1.
Tiepolo family, i. 189 note 1.
Tiepolo, Almorò Cesare, i. 213, 291, 342.
his just and excellent character, i. 344-347.
Tiepolo, G. B., painter, ii. [338].
a genius of the first order, ii. [339].
Tiepolo, Nicolò Maria, his condemnation of comedians, i. 71.
Tiepolo Gozzi, Angela, mother of Carlo Gozzi—See Gozzi, Angela Tiepolo.
Toaldo, Professor, ii. [75].
Todeschini, Raffaelle, ii. [295], [326].
Tommassei, his contempt for Gozzi, i. 179.
Tonina, a courtesan of Zara, i. 262.
Gozzi's impromptu attack on, in the theatre, i. 269.
Tron, Andrea, Procuratore di San Marco, i. 9, 14; ii. 264 note 1.
Tron, Caterina Dolfin, see Dolfin-Tron, Caterina.
Truffaldino, the mask, a modification of Arlecchino, i. 46, 150; ii. 131 note 1.
as used by Gozzi, i. 153.
Vendramini, Antonio, proprietor of the theatre of S. Salvadore, ii. [167], [173], [276].
Venice—
its decadence, i. 7 note 1.
its political and social state about the middle of the 18th century, i. 82.
conflict of liberalism and conservatism in literature and the theatre, i. 86.
success of the Comédie Larmoyante, i. 87.
foundation of the Academy de' Granelleschi, i. 89.
the granting of citizenship in, i. 186 note 1.
the position of the Cittadini Originari, i. 186 note 1.
posts open to the Cittadini, i. 187 note 3.
Gozzi's remarks on the degeneration of the Venetian youth, i. 194.
robes of the Dignitaries, i. 217 note 1.
the office of Grand Chancellor, i. 230 note 1.
the values of the sequin and lira, i. 274 note 1.
Decime (taxes), i. 280 note 1.
its theatres, i. 332 note 1; ii. [167].
its law of entail, i. 336 note 1.
the Avogadori del Comun, i. 341 note 1.
decay of literary taste in, ii. 108-110.
the length of the theatrical year, ii. 146 note 1.
its decrepitude, as shown in State interference in Gratarol's quarrel with Gozzi, ii. 303 note 1.
the influence of the French Revolution on, ii. [328].
partial revival of art in, in the 18th century, ii. [338].
Longhi's paintings of contemporary life in, ii. 338 note 1; ii. [341], [347], [358].
Verdani, Abbé Giovan Antonio, i. 196.
Vilio, Count, of Desenzano, ii. [24].
Vinacesi, Elisabetta, actress, ii. [213].
Vincentini, Tommaso, his excellence as Harlequin, i. 67.
Vitalba, Giovanni, actor, ii. [269].
the actor who caricatured Gratarol in the "Droghe d'Amore," ii. [272].
assaulted by a ruffian in Milan, ii. [318].
Wagner, Richard, his "Fairies," a setting of Gozzi's "Donna Serpente," i. 160 note 1, 181.
Werthes, Franz A. C., translator of Gozzi's "Fiabe" into German, i. 180.
Widiman, Count Ludovico, a patron of Goldoni, ii. [124].
Zanche, Daniele, advocate, ii. [161].
Zanerini, Petronio, the best actor of Italy, ii. [323].
Zanoni, Atanagio, comedian, i. 112 note 1; ii. [131], [323].
Zannuzzi, Francesco, of the Comédie Italienne at Paris, ii. 211, 212 note 1.
Zeno, Apostolo, encourages Gozzi in his poetical attempts, i. 207.
his influence in the drama, i. 207 note 1.
Zini, Francesco, a cloth merchant, wishes to buy the Gozzis' house, i. 299.
Carlo Gozzi tries to prevent the purchase, i. 300.
Zon, Signer, Secretary to the Inquisitors of State, ii. 303 note 1.
Zucchi, Padre, an improvisatore, i. 203.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Under date August 31, 1885, with the assumed signature of E. H. Westbourne. See Academy, No. 696, Sept. 5, 1885.

[2] See Romanin, Storia Documentata di Venezia, vol. viii. ch. 7.

[3] Gratarol was not formally divorced from his wife. This appears from several passages of his Narrazione Apologetica. It may, however, be here observed that scandalous irregularities with regard to matrimony formed one of the main signs of Venetian decadence. Between 1782 and 1796 the Council of Ten received no fewer than 264 petitions for divorce, and the Patriarch is said to have had 900 applications at one time before him, requiring his decision in matters relating to a dissolution of the marriage tie. See Magrini, op. cit., p. 23; and Macchi, Storia del Concilio dei Dieci, vol. ii. p. 355. It seems that the most shameless reasons were collusively alleged by the parties in these cases for breaking a tie which the Church regarded as indissoluble. In 1782 the Ten passed a law requiring a divorced woman to enter a convent.

[4] A short while before, he had been appointed Resident at Turin, and had received the usual equipment for that service. Circumstances independent of his own will in the matter prevented him from assuming the office. His political ill-wishers were able to point to the unused grant which he had pocketed.

[5] Caterina was the daughter of the ancient and noble, but impoverished house of Dolfin. She contracted her first marriage with a member of the Tiepolo family, obtained a divorce from him, and married her lover, Andrea Tron.

[6] It may be read in Gratarol's Narrazione Apologetica, vol. ii. p. 78, &c.

[7] These magistrates acted for the Fisco or Treasury of the Republic.

[8] It has been suggested that Gratarol so heavily mortgaged his lands before leaving Venice that they were not worth more than this sum, after allowing for rent charges on them and fidei commissa. See the observations of a self-styled impartial writer printed at the end of the Narrazione Apologetica, ed. 1797. I must, however, observe that this writer is by no means impartial. The essay in question is a piece of skilful special pleading in defence of Mme. Tron, her husband, the oligarchs of Venice, and the officers who executed the bando against Gratarol.

[9] Gratarol pays high tribute to Gozzi's genius. But he sticks to the conviction that the Droghe d'Amore was meant to turn him into ridicule, and that its author could, if he had chosen, have withdrawn it from the stage.

[10] He tells us that he began the Memoirs on April 30, 1780. Memorie, vol. i. p. 3. The passage occurs in Gozzi's manifesto, of which more anon. I may add that the manifesto is not included in all copies of the Memoirs.

[11] An anonymous answer, entitled Riflessioni d'un Imparziale, appeared at Lugano. This was ascribed to Carlo Gozzi's pen; but he repudiated the pamphlet, and it does not bear the mark of his style. It may be found at the end of vol. ii. of Gratarol's Narr. Apol., ed. 1797, Venice, Silvestro Gatti.

[12] Memorie, vol i. pp. 3-15.

[13] This is evident from the appearance of the Ragionamento del Cittadino Carlo Gozzi a' Cittadini amici della Memoria di P. A. Gratarol at the beginning of the Memorie, vol. ii.

[14] Memorie Ultime, p. 39; Gozzi's Memorie, vol. ii. p. x.

[15] The family of Widiman or Widman was of patrician rank in Venice.

[16] Vol. i. p. 4.

[17] Vol. ii. p. xvi.

[18] De Musset, in order to support his view of Gozzi as the precursor of Romanticism and of Hoffmann, strains to the utmost the chapter on Contrattempi in the Memoirs. He furthermore professes to have extracted a very bizarre account of the reasons why Gozzi abandoned his Fiabe—in plain words, because the elves and spirits he brought upon the stage were resolved to be revenged on him—from a letter addressed to Gasparo by Carlo Gozzi (Mémoires de Charles Gozzi, pp. 184-188). De Musset adds no reference to the source of this alleged letter, which is mentioned by neither Magrini nor Masi. Indeed, Signor Ernesto Masi informs me that he knows nothing about it. I too have failed to discover it. In his Memoirs, and in the prefaces to several plays, Gozzi gives a very different account of the reasons why he stopped producing Fiabe. I am loth to draw the conclusion that the letter in question was a deliberate forgery of Paul de Musset's. Further researches may bring it still to light, but at present it has to be regarded with the greatest possible suspicion.

[19] I have treated the subject of the Italian drama elsewhere: Renaissance in Italy, vol. v. ch. 11.

[20] The full title would be Commedia dell' Arte all' Improviso. It is also called Commedia a soggetto, Commedia non scritta, Commedia improvisa. The written comedy, beside Commedia Erudita, was also called Commedia sostenuta, scritta, or letteraria.

[21] See what I have said at length upon this point in my Shakespeare's Predecessors, p. 259, and Renaissance in Italy, vol. v. p. 188.

[22] To Maurice Sand, in his Masques et Bouffons, vol. ii. p. 77 et seq., is due the merit of having resuscitated the fame of this great local dramatist, yet I think M. Sand exaggerates Beolco's influence in the creation of impromptu comedy.

[23] See Collier's English Dramatic Poetry (ed. 1879), vol. iii. p. 197.

[24] It is impossible to avoid the awkwardness of using the word mask in a double sense,—both to indicate the fixed character assumed by a certain species of actor, and also the vizard which concealed his features.

[25] It may here be mentioned that in English we still retain the names of some of these masks, as Zany, Harlequin, Pantaloon, and Punch. Our Columbine is the Neapolitan form of the Servetta or soubrette. Our Scaramouch is one of the numerous forms of the Captain, which obtained great popularity at Paris. Whether the Clown of our pantomimes has to be classed with the Villano, or rather with one of the Zanni, I am uncertain. His traditional connection with the part of Pantaloon seems to indicate the latter alternative.

[26] In a comedy by Virgilio Verucci (Li Diversi Linguaggi, Venezia, 1609), French, Venetian, Bergamasque, Roman, Sicilian, Bolognese, Neapolitan, Matriccian, Perugian, and Florentine dialects were spoken. See Bartoli, op. cit., p. lxxix.

[27] Conversely, masks were sometimes created out of persons. Thus the plebeian poet of Naples, Francesco Cerlone, moulded the mask of Don Fastidio upon a barber of his acquaintance, Francesco Massaro. Here the man became a type; and after he had made it famous, it was continued by other players, who adapted themselves to his humours. (See Scherillo's Commedia dell' Arte, chap, iii., for the history of Don Fastidio). This mask was very popular for a time in Southern Italy. When Casanova wanted to engage a troop at Otranto for performance at Corfu, he had to choose between the rival companies of Neapolitan Don Fastidio and Sicilian Battipaglia (Mémoires, vol. i. ch. xv.). The Capocomici, as I have previously mentioned, were known by the names of their masks.

[28] Fescenninus is variously derived from the town Fescennia in South Etruria, or from fascinum, the Latin form of phallus.

[29] The common meaning of satura and farsa, both of which have reference to stuffing, is somewhat singular.

[30] I have seen them doing this with reticence and decorum at Montepulciano.

[31] A curious passage in the Life of Don Pietro di Toledo (Arch. Stor., vol. ix. p. 23) shows what a startling impression these Dionysiac revels made upon a Spanish Viceroy in the early seventeenth century. Pontano's Latin poems are full of matter bearing on the vitality of antique rustic habits in the neighbourhood of Naples.

[32] It was included in the first edition of the Canti Carnascialeschi, 1559, and is reprinted in Verzone's edition of Grazzini's Rime Burlesche, Firenze, Sansone, 1882.

[33] "Acting the Bergamasque and the Venetian, we roam the whole world over, and the recitation of comedies is our trade.... We are all of us Zanni, excellent and perfect players; the other choice actors of our troupe, lovers, ladies, hermits, and soldiers, have stayed behind to guard our booth.... We have a stock of new comedies, so fine, so mirthful, and so witty, that when you hear them you will die of laughing. Afterwards you will see a dance upon our stage, all full of new and varied sports.... But since there is a certain custom in this country, ladies, which prevents your coming to our public show, if you will open your house-doors to us, we will let you taste in part the sweetness and the pleasure of our sports."

[34] The other channels were French plays, modifications of English plays, adaptations of Spanish plays, and musical melodramas.

[35] I do not vouch for this etymology, which Boerio, the compiler of the Venetian Glossary, has adopted. For myself, I should be well contented with the derivation from San Pantaleone, and would willingly make him the patron saint of pantaloons and professed trousers-makers.

[36] It is singular that Shakespeare, who uses Pantalone as the symbol of old age in As You Like It, knew him already in decrepitude.

[37] It was my good fortune, while writing these pages at Davos in the summer of 1888, to become acquainted with two brothers from Bergamo, who were living representatives of the Zanni. They had come to help at the hay-harvest, leaving their own farm in the Bergamasque hills. Brighella's wit and knavery amused me. I marvelled at Arlecchino's simplicity and suppleness.

[38] Carlo Gozzi at Zara in his youth created a new type of the Servetta, adapted to Dalmatian circumstances, under the name of Luce.

[39] Scherillo, in his Commedia dell' Arte, has resuscitated Cerlone's fame, as Maurice Sand made us acquainted with Beolco.

[40] See above, [p. 38].

[41] For a short notice of these curious Maccaronic poems, I Cantici di Fidentio Glottogrysio Ludimagistro, see my Renaissance in Italy, vol. v. p. 328. The obscurity of their jargon veiled considerable indecency. It is noticeable that this book, now exceedingly rare, should have become the text-book of the Pedante. But see Bartoli, op. cit., pp. lii., lvii.

[42] Burattino is so kaleidoscopic that at last he becomes the patronymic hero of marionettes in Italy. I Burattini are the acting dolls.

[43] In the Ragionamento Ingenuo and Appendice, Op., 1772, vols i. and iv.

[44] Scenari Inediti, Firenze, Sansoni, 1880.

[45] It has to be mentioned that in plays of a more serious description, the parts of character were frequently written out, and only the parts of the masks left to improvisation. This was the method pursued by Gozzi in his Fiabe.

[46] Andrea Perrucci, Dell' Arte Rappresentativa premeditata ed all' improvviso, Napoli, 1699, quoted by Bartoli, op. cit., p. lxxi.

[47] Histoire Anecdotique du Théâtre Italien, Paris, 1769, quoted by Bartoli, op. cit., p. lxxvi.

[48] Le Théâtre Italien, quoted by Bartoli, op. cit., p. lxx.

[49] These phrases are used by Gozzi in his Memorie Inutili. Compare what he says in his Appendice al Ragionamento Ingenuo, Op., 1772, vol. iv. p. 40.

[50] Quoted by Bartoli, op. cit., p. lxxi.

[51] I am indebted to Maurice Sand, Masques et Bouffons.

[52] Vol. iii. p. 201.

[53] Ragionamento Ingenuo, Op., 1772, vol. i.

[54] Scherillo, in his book on La Commedia dell' Arte, ch. vi., has given the history of San Carlo's efforts to suppress the theatre at Milan.

[55] Nicolò Maria Tiepolo, about 1778, quoted by Molmenti in his Essay on Goldoni, Venezia, Ongania, 1880, p. 68.

[56] Pasquali's edition, 1761; also, Teatro Comico, act i. sc. 2.

[57] Mémoires de Jacques Casanova, Bruxelles, Rozez, vol. i. ch. II.

[58] Mémoires de M. Goldoni, Paris, Veuve Duchesne, 1787, vol. i. ch. 5.

[59] A common inn-sign. This reminds us of the earliest performances of plays in the yards of London hostelries.

[60] Ed. cit., vol i. p. 228.

[61] See his Mémoires, part i. ch. 40.

[62] This is perhaps the proper place to explain the meaning of Martellian verses. They owe their name to Pier Jacopo Martelli (1665-1725), who revived them, and used them for the drama. Metrically speaking, Martellian verses are twelve-syllable lines of the Alexandrine type. These long lines had been commonly employed in Italy during the thirteenth century, before the heroic verse of eleven syllables obtained ascendancy. It is difficult to say why the Alexandrine, which Italy in the thirteenth century shared with France, died out in the former country and became the standard heroic line of the latter. Possibly the reason may be found in the Italian tendency toward double rhymes; the so-called versi piani of Dante being decasyllabic iambics with a redundant syllable rather than hendecasyllabics. Anyhow, the Alexandrine has not flourished south of the Alps. Martelli's revival did not prosper; and Carducci, in his Su' Campi di Marengo (Nuove Poesie, p. 91), is the only recent poet who has attempted them with success.

[63] Opere, ed. 1772, tom. viii. p. 27. "The partisans on both sides gathered forces daily. One swears by Original (a name for Goldoni), the other by Plunder (Chiari, because of his plagiarisms). The whole city was turned upside down, and indeed it is no laughing matter. Brothers fought with brothers, wives did worse with their husbands. Everywhere the wrangling was fierce; nought but confusion, nought but discord."

[64] The details of the controversy between Gozzi and Goldoni are given at fuller length than I have attempted in Signor Ernesto Masi's masterly Introduction to his edition of the Fiabe Teatrali.

[65] Opere, vol. viii. Tartana is a large merchant vessel.

[66] The editor of this Venetian Zadkiel was originally Giovanni Pozzobon. After his death it was continued by Giambattista Bada. Pozzobon was nicknamed Schieson. The almanac was adorned with a ridiculous portrait of a doctor in a huge wig. Owing to this fact, Schieson came to signify any one with rumpled hair. See Boerio's Dizionario del Dialetto Veneziano.

[67] Opere, vol. viii. p. 164.

[68] The original exists in MS. at the Marcian Library. Goldoni wrote the poem on the occasion of S. E. Bastian Venier's return from the rectorship of Bergamo. When he reprinted it in the edition of his poetical works (Pasquali, Venezia, 1764), he omitted the passage referring to Gozzi's Tartana. The lines above are given in Magrini's and Masi's essays. I add a translation. "I have seen a certain Tartana in print, full of rancid and insipid verses, verses bad enough to terrify a goblin, verses seasoned by the wise plagiary with acrid salt of evil-speaking, full of false arrogant sentiments. One can, however, condone this licence in one who is out of temper with Fortune, she being not greatly well-affected toward him. He who speaks evil without any reason shown, he who does not prove his assumptions and his arguments, acts like the dog who barks against the moon."

[69] It was written for the marriage of Contarini Venier. "A Lombard who pretends to be a Delia Cruscan, with a smile on his lips and venom in his heart."

[70] "Only too well I know that I am not a good writer, and that I never drank at the best fountains. I write and reason as my style dictates, and sometimes by good chance I also have afforded pleasure. But woe to me if the Florentine sieve should be applied to sifting my productions."

[71] Opere, vol. viii. p. 183. "I am engaged in preparing a commentary which shall prove both the assumption and the argument."

[72] Il Teatro Comico was the first of the famous sixteen comedies of 1749-50. The list of the pieces to be expected was announced in it. See Goldoni's Memoirs, part i. ch. 7.

[73] "Yes, thou art the eagle, I am the ant. Thou soarest to the zenith without exertion; my Muse cannot rise to the poles of the universe."

[74] Only in this respect, however; otherwise, as artist, Gozzi differs widely from Aristophanes.

[75] Opere, vol. iii. p. 9.

[76] The actors in Sacchi's company were: Antonio Sacchi, Truffaldino; Atanagio Zanoni, Brighella; Agostino Fiorelli, Tartaglia; Cesare Darbes, Pantalone; Adriana Sacchi Zanoni, Smeraldina; Antonia Sacchi, Beatrice; together with Ignazio Casanova and Gaetano Casali. How the parts of Leandro, Clarice, Rè di Coppe, Celio, Morgana, Creonta, Ninetta were distributed, we do not know. Antonia Sacchi (the Beatrice of the troupe) probably played Clarice.

[77] In Italian, Rè di Coppe. The Italian suits are Coppe or cups, Danari or coins, Spade or swords (whence our Spades), Bastoni or clubs.

[78] In Italian, Cavaliere di Coppe.

[79] I have adopted the old English fourteen-syllable line for the translation of Gozzi's Martellian verses. It seemed to me that the lumbering effect of this metre lent itself to the spirit of his parody. What Martellian verses were has been explained at p. 97.

[80] I cannot pretend to give a literal translation of these gross parodies of Goldoni's forensic verbiage. The most I can do is to stuff the verse with more or less of legal phraseology.

[81] See above, [p. 112], for the names of the five actors who sustained these parts in Sacchi's company.

[82] I wrote this in the spring of 1888, before I was aware that Wagner had set the Donna Serpente to music. His early piece, The Fairies, was composed in 1833, and first performed this year in June at Munich.

[83] Act ii. sc. 5. In Masi's edition, vol. ii. p. 458. Readers who care for further diatribes à la Gozzi on these topics, may be referred to the Astrazione which serves as introduction to his translation of Boileau, Op., vol. vii. p. 53.

[84]

"Many are now alive,

Who haply are more statues than I am.

Thou shalt experience what power hath a statue,

And how a live man may become an image."

[85] Tarocchi is the name for the cards, seventy-eight in number, used in a now well-nigh forgotten game. Fifty-six cards of the whole series consist of the four Italian suits: Coppe, Spade, Bastoni, and Danari. The remaining twenty-two are properly called Tarocchi, and in the game of Taroc take precedence of any cards of the four ordinary suits.

[86]

"I too have charms,

Sweet flatteries, dulcet wiles; and to my side

He shall be faithful ever. Yet I would not

That, loving him, my kindness should arouse

In hearts of others jealousy."

[87]

"Fair, yea, most fair thou art in sooth; yet still more fair wouldst be

Didst thou an apple hold which sings, plucked from the magic tree.

. . . . . . . . . .

Daughter, I trow that thou art fair; yet still more fair wouldst be

Didst thou that water hold which plays and dances merrily."

[88]

"So! this is my philosopher, who went

Yesterday picking sticks, and now! ... But patience!...

I wished to stay with her, for I adore her;

And stay with her I shall. We must contrive

To hold our tongue; and yet this may not be.

I vow I scarcely knew her! What grand airs!

Some devil must have daubed her o'er with gold.

'Twould vex me sorely if the little hussy ...

Some rich milord perhaps.... Well, I'll know all."

[Exit.

[89] There are five of these old statues, painted, in Moorish costumes. One of them has the name Rioba carved above his head. Everybody in Venice, of course, knew them; and their appearance on the stage must have been mirth-promoting.

[90] Mémoires, part ii. cap. 45.

[91] Letters from Italy, dated October 4, October 6, and October 10, 1786.

[92] See Masi's Essay, p. cxxxii.

[93] Carlo Gozzi, Théâtre Fiabesque, Alphonse Royer. Paris, Michel Lévy, 1865.

[94] London, W. Satchell & Co. 1880.

[95] Through the courtesy of Mr. John P. Anderson of the British Museum I am able to state that, besides a short article in the Encyclopædia Britannica, he can only discover an essay in Lippincott's Magazine (vol. xx. p. 347, &c.), entitled "A Venetian of the Eighteenth Century," which deals with Carlo Gozzi.

[96] The Gozzi family were thus Cittadini Originari of Venice. These Cittadini had to prove legitimate birth in the city; three generations during which the family had exercised no mechanical arts; freedom from any criminal stain, debts to the state, or factious behaviour. Citizenship, as in the case of the Gozzi, was also granted by privilege. The Cittadini formed a class of burgher aristocracy, ranking below the patricians and taking no part in the actual government of the State, since they did not vote in the Consiglio Grande. Their names, pedigrees, and arms were enrolled in a book, of which many copies exist, and which was commonly called the Libro d'Argento, to distinguish it from the Libro d'Oro of the patricians. In a MS. of the seventeenth century, which belonged to Cicogna, now at the Museo Civico, entitled Le Due Corone della Nobiltà Veneziana, Corona Seconda, the Gozzi arms are blazoned thus: "Or, on the topmost branches of an olive-tree vert a dove ppr., and round the stem of the tree a scroll argent inscribed Signum Pacis." The family is described as wealthy; but no pedigree is given: Non vi è albero. Carlo Gozzi, in his Lettera Confutatoria, Memorie, vol. iii. p. 31, asserts that the privilege of citizenship was given to his ancestors by the Doge Cicogna (1585-95). It is neither impossible nor improbable that the Gozzi of Bergamo were derived from the same stock as the Gozze or Gozzi of Ragusa. These latter drew their pedigree from Herzegovina, and were therefore Slavs. We know that the patrician families of Polo and Sagredo came originally from Sebenico.

[97] Their palace is still inhabited by a Conte Gozzi. The arca, or family sepulture, can no longer be traced in the church. It was at the foot of the altar in the Chapel of the Madonna. Here Carlo Gozzi was buried.

[98] In a voluminous MS. written by Cicogna, embodying all he could collect about the Famiglie Cittadine (now at the Museo Civico), we find that Alberto Gozi detto delle Sede was inscribed among the patricians in 1646. I may mention that Cicogna tricks the arms of Gozzi without the dove.

[99] The Grand Chancellor, the Ducal Notaries, and the Secretaries of many Magistracies, were chosen from the Cittadini, who were also sent, after holding such posts, as ambassadors of the second class, or Residents, to foreign Courts.

[100] The word, which I have translated acre, is campo. Now the campo differed in different provinces of Lombardy. But the Campo Padovano corresponded pretty nearly to an English acre; and from another passage in Gozzi (Memorie, vol. iii. p. 226) it appears that he was in the habit of using the Paduan standard.

[101] The Gozzi were what are called in Venice Conti di Terra Ferma, and their title seems to have been dependent upon these feudal tenures.

[102] At the time when Gozzi wrote, this was the eldest branch, called Di San Fantin. Two remote branches, of S. Apollinare and San Polo, survived. They descended from a collateral ancestor, Girolamo Tiepolo, who died in 1516. The branch of S. Polo expired in 1820. See Litta, Famiglie Celebri. The Tiepolo family was one of the oldest and most illustrious among the patrician houses. It ranked with the Case vecchie, as distinguished from the Case nuove. These Case vecchie were also called tribunizie, from having exercised the highest offices of State at the time when Venice was still governed by tribunes, and before the foundation of the Dogeship. Of these oldest and purest noble houses there were twenty-four. The closing of the Grand Council in 1297, which determined the oligarchical character of the Venetian government, led to an attempted revolution in the State by Baiamonte Tiepolo. Tiepolo's conspiracy was really an effort in the interests of the old aristocracy to throw off the yoke which novi homines were fixing on the commonwealth. An excellent essay on Baiamonte Tiepolo will be found in H. F. Brown's Venetian Studies. I may add to this note that the Gozzi had previously intermarried with the Corner, Zuccato, Donà, and Morosini, patrician houses of high respectability.

[103] Carlo Gozzi was born December 13, 1720. He probably knew that he was in his sixtieth year; and this passage enables us to measure the exact amount of duplicity which he thought venial in composing his Memoirs. It was Gozzi's object to extenuate the fact that his liaison with Teodora Ricci had been carried on when he was past the age of fifty. When he asserts that he had "not yet reached the age of sixty," he was just within the bounds of veracity; for he wanted more than seven months to complete his sixtieth year.

[104] Collegi. Gasparo was educated in the Somaschan establishment at S. Cipriano on the island of Murano.

[105] Casanova, in the first chapter of his Memoirs, says that he suffered during his boyhood from the same violent hæmorrhages.

[106] Gozzi might have cited Galileo, whose style, formed by the study of the "divine" Ariosto, is a model of exquisite and urbane Italian diction.

[107] Compare what Goldoni says about the marionette theatre at his grandfather's country-seat. In some of the great villas of the Venetian nobility these private stages were built on an enormous scale. The account of Marco Contarini's theatre at Piazzola near Padua, and of the sumptuous dramatic performances which took place there, reads like a passage from the Arabian Nights. See Romanin's Storia di Venezia, vol. vii. p. 550.

[108] I may here say that the title of cavaliere, or knight, was commonly given to members of patrician families at Venice, irrespective of their being laymen or in orders.

[109] Gaspara Stampa was born at Padua, but was a gentlewoman of Milan by descent. She died about 1554, at the age of thirty. If this edition of Gaspara Stampa's Rime is the one prepared for publication by Luisa Bergalli (Gozzi's sister-in-law), there is the same confusion of dates here as I have noticed above. It was published when Gozzi had reached his seventeenth year.

[110] A tablet over the entrance to the restaurant at the Calcina on the Zattere, records that Apostolo Zeno dwelt there. It was, perhaps, to this house that young Gozzi paid his visit. Zeno (b. 1668, d. 1750) exercised considerable influence over the Italian drama. He wrote plays for music and oratorios. For some years he held the post of Cesarean poet at Vienna, which he resigned to the more celebrated Metastasio.

[111] Luisa Pisana Bergalli was born at Venice in 1703, of humble parentage, being descended from a Piedmontese shoemaker. Luigi Mocenigo and Pisana Cornaro held her at the font, and gave her their two Christian names. She showed distinguished talents in early youth, and was educated by the painter Rosalba Carriera, afterwards by Caterino and Apostolo Zeno. At twenty-three she published a tragedy and an anthology of Italian poems by female writers; at twenty-five another tragedy; at thirty a translation of Terence, and a comedy dedicated to Count Jacopo Antonio Gozzi. It appears from this dedication to Le avventure del poeta that she was the protegée of both Count Gozzi and his wife, and on the best of terms with their children. She was thirty-five and Gasparo was twenty-five when they married. See Tommasei, Storia Civile nella Letteraria, pp. 185-188.

[112] The title Provveditore Generale di Mare was given to the supreme head of the Venetian naval and military forces in the Levant. He resided at Corfu, where he maintained a princely court, and ruled like a sovereign, being only responsible for his actions to the Senate. Next in importance to this functionary was the Provveditore Generale di Dalmazia, of whose Court we shall hear much in Gozzi's Memoirs. Casanova, who went to Corfu in the train of the Prov. Gen. Dolfino, called Il Bucentoro because of his grand manner, and the father of the famous Caterina Dolfin Tron, gives an excellent account of the Court there, its military, naval, and civil establishment. Chapters xiii.-xvi. of the first volume of his Memoirs deserve to be compared with the corresponding part of Gozzi's.

[113] Not at seventeen, but at twenty. Gozzi was born in 1720, and Quirini took the government of Dalmatia in 1740.

[114] Togato. The State dignitaries of Venice wore robes of various colours and forms, according to their office. A simple nobleman was bound to go abroad in a flowing robe of silk, or toga, ample enough to conceal whatever costume he may have worn beneath it.

[115] Armata, composed of naval and military forces, to act equally on sea and shore.

[116] It seems from the names of these larger galleys that they were the official ships of the Provveditore, his own flag-ship and her attendant convoy. Romanin (vol. viii. p. 372) says that at this epoch Venice kept fifteen heavy galleys, ten lighter, nine sailing ships of the frigate build, and twenty-four armed craft of other descriptions. The galleys and sailing ships were commanded only by patricians. This was her peace establishment.

[117] Gozzi says adjutante alone. Adjutante di campo is aide-de-camp.

[118] This word is in the Italian armata. The armata, to which Gozzi belonged, was properly an armament of mixed naval and military forces, and armata would naturally be translated "navy." He was attached to it, however, in the quality of soldier, and was eligible (as we shall afterwards see) for transfer into the land forces of the State in Lombardy. Thus he belonged to the Venetian army.

[119] This was the highest office in the State to which a cittadino could aspire. It conferred the rank of cavaliere. The Grand Chancellor could open public despatches; he attended the sittings of the Grand Council and the Senate, but without a vote, and was the official chief of all the civil servants.

[120] Probably Freschot, the author of several works on Venice, a Frenchman by birth.

[121] The native Dalmatians of Slav origin, inhabiting the inland villages and country districts, were called by this name.

[122] Scogli. A long low island opposite the harbour of Zara is so called.

[123] This and other French terms show to what extent the military system of Venice had been modernised.

[124] Razionato.

[125] This chapter will be read with interest by students of the Commedia dell' Arte. It throws light upon the way in which an actor of originality could adapt one of the fixed characters of that comedy, in this case the servetta, to his own talents and to local circumstances.

[126] Pallone is a game played with a large leather ball, filled with air, and something like our football. In Italy it is struck with the hand, which is armed for the purpose with gloves or a flat short bat fixed on the palm. Sides are chosen, and the game roughly resembles tennis on a large scale. Pallone is the original of our balloon.

[127] The sequin at this time was worth twenty-two lire Venete. The worth of the lira was about half a franc, says Romanin (vol. viii. p. 302). Romanin in the same place fixes the ducat at eight lire. Gozzi's debt amounted to 1248 lire. This would make only 156 ducats at the above rate. But the relation of the ducat to the sequin and the lira is very obscure, and seems to have varied according to the kind of ducat.

[128] Decime. Taxes annually raised upon the whole property of a Venetian.

[129] Opere, vol. vii. p. 393. This is the stanza—

Gli antichi di provincia tuoi fedeli

Son quasi tutti fuggiti alle ville,

In castellacci discoperti a' cieli,

Con figli e figlie e nipoti e pupille,

Ripieni di pensieri acri e crudeli,

Allor che suonan mezzodì le squille.

Educazion non han, mangiar, nè bere;

Pensa se daran nerbo alle tue schiere!

This is said to the burlesque Carlo Magno of the poem. The passage in the text confirms the theory that Gozzi intended his Carlo Magno to represent the decrepit majesty of Venice.

[130] Almorò is the Venetian form of the name Ermolao.

[131] Gozzi's description of the Venetian Cortesan may serve as illustration to a popular play of Goldoni's, Momolo Cortesan. This was the first comedy of character Goldoni composed. Its title-rôle was written for a celebrated Pantalone, Golinetti (see Goldoni's Memoirs, part i. ch. 40). When he printed it, he translated the title into L'Uomo di Mondo, finding no exact equivalent for the Venetian phrase Cortesan. Goldoni's account of the character tallies with Gozzi's.

[132] In these and several passages which follow, Gozzi ascribes the pecuniary embarrassments of his family to the maladministration of his mother, aided by his sister-in-law. It it only fair to say, that Gasparo Gozzi's correspondence confirms his veracity. That favourite and favoured eldest son complains bitterly that, even to the last days of her life, his mother insisted on managing the property, and that she made underhand contracts to the prejudice of himself and his children. It was, in fact, a misfortune for the Gozzi that their father, Jacopo Antonio, married into a patrician family of higher rank and pretensions than his own. Angela Tiepolo, knowing herself to be one of the last representatives of a very noble house, with considerable expectations from her childless brother, drove her easy-going husband into ruinous expenditure, and domineered over her kindred by right of a marriage which savoured of a mésalliance. See the article upon her in Litta's Famiglie Celebri, sub tit. "Tiepolo."

[133] The bautta and the mask were permitted at Venice from the first Sunday in October until Ash Wednesday.

[134] This was a very long scarf of black silk, which, draped above the head, and fulling over the shoulders, was tied in a knot, and allowed to hang on both sides of the wearer's skirts. The mask or bautta was only permitted during the prolonged Venetian Carnival.

[135] The Italian is democraziano. Perhaps Gozzi wrote democriziano, from Democritus, the sage who laughed at all things. In either case the adjective is wrongly formed. It ought to be either democratico or democritico. But democrazia may have led him to democraziano. He not infrequently employs this phrase, which always puzzles me, because nobody was really less democratic than Carlo Gozzi, and as yet, in 1780, he had no reason, under the pressure of the Revolution, to dissemble.

[136] The theatres of Venice were called by the names of the parishes in which they stood, or of non-parochial churches to which they were contiguous. S. Angelo was one of the smaller.

[137] I have condensed in this sentence the details of a long and tiresome chapter (chap. xxix.). It is worth adding here that the law of Venice with regard to entail was very strict; time gave no title to a purchaser who had obtained possession of an estate subject to fidei commissa. One of Goethe's most interesting letters from Venice (October 5, 1786) contains the full description of a cause he heard pleaded in the Ducal palace for the recovery of illegally alienated real property. Goethe remarks upon the extraordinary permanence of trusts in Venice.

[138] The author of an unfinished work on Venetian literature.

[139] It seems probable that Gozzi was really at one time on the point of marrying this lady.

[140] The Avvogadori del Comune, or Advocatores Comunis, corresponded in a certain sense to the modern Procuratori di Stato, and had some resemblance to the Roman tribunes. They formed a High Court of Justice for the guardianship of property accruing to the Exchequer, for the protection of private rights in property, rights of minors and widows, the superintendence of registers of births and marriages, &c. Three patricians formed the board.

[141] The Somascan Order was founded about 1540 by Girolamo Miani, a Venetian senator, upon the model of the Theatines. Its object was education, principally of the poor. With regard to the school at S. Cipriano, it is worth mentioning that the famous adventurer, Casanova, was placed there by his guardian the Abbé Grimani in the year 1740 or thereabouts. He gives a full account of the institution in his Memoirs (vol. i. ch. vi.), from which it appears that at this epoch about 150 youths were educated by the Somascan monks. Readers of Casanova need hardly be reminded that he was expelled from the seminary after a few weeks' residence. Gasparo Gozzi was also educated here.

[142] This scene has actually been preserved and printed in Gasparo Gozzi's works. Opere, Minerva, Padova, vol. vii. It forms the 6th scene of the 3rd act of Esopo in Città, and is very much as Carlo Gozzi describes it. The ancient lady throws the principal blame for her domestic sufferings upon a certain "Sicofante, Dottor legista di questa città," whom I take to be Carlo's lawyer, Testa.

[143] Gozzi can hardly not have been thinking of poor Gratarol, when he penned these lines. Mentally he contrasts his own conduct under the inconvenience of a stage-satire with Gratarol's.

[144] See above, [p. 319].

[145] On the Fondamenta Nuove, looking across Murano to the mountains of the Dolomites. See Tommasei, op. cit., p. 258.

[146] This was written in 1780, but when it was printed in 1797, Louis XVI. had little reason to be proud of his titles.

[147] He was made secretary to the Riformatori dello Studio.

[148] Gozzi here resumes a portion of the 29th chapter of his Memoirs, which I have condensed in Chapter XXIV. above (see note to p. 336). It seemed unnecessary to burden the translation of his autobiography with more of legal details than was absolutely necessary for understanding the tenor of his life-experience.

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