While Renzo is on his journey, Barbarina keeps continually gazing on the dagger. It does not cease to shine. But Smeraldina and the speaking statue of Pompea work upon her feelings by suggesting the perils her brother is undergoing, to which her own vanity has exposed him. Moved at last by simple human sympathy, she finds the situation intolerable, and resolves to follow Renzo to the place of danger. It is this return to nature which saves her, and brings about a happy catastrophe. Barbarina renounces her wish to wed Tartaglia, and thinks only of arresting Renzo in his dangerous course. She sets off with Smeraldina; and the magic palace is left desolate, in mourning, all its splendour gone.
Renzo and Truffaldino have now reached the Goblin's hill, where the Green Bird is seen upon a perch, chained by the leg. Trying to capture him, Renzo turns into a statue; and there is a whole gathering of similar statues in the place—men who essayed the same adventure, and failed.
Barbarina and Smeraldina arrive at the scene of action. The dagger drops blood. Barbarina's mask of false philosophy and selfish vanity drops off. She becomes a simple woman, filled with repentance and anguish for her brother who is dead. She flings herself upon the bosom of poor Smeraldina, whom she had so villainously treated. At this juncture, when all seems lost, Calmon appears, and reads her a sound moral lecture. Then he points to a scroll before her feet, and instructs her what she has to do. She must walk up to within a hair's-breadth—no more and no less—of the bird, and take good heed that he does not utter a sound before she has read aloud the words inscribed upon the scroll. If she succeeds in this feat, all may yet come right. There is a breathless moment, during which Barbarina executes what Calmon told her. The bird is captured, and begins to talk. Let her take a feather from his tail. That will restore the statues to life.
The drama is quickly wound up. By means of the bird's tail-feather, Renzo and Pompea are made happy lovers. Ninetta returns from her hole. Tartagliona is changed into a tortoise, and Brighella into a donkey. The Green Bird resumes his form as King of Terradombra and plights his faith to Barbarina. Tartaglia recognises his lost son and daughter, and is fain to be contented with the resuscitated wife whom he had so wantonly condemned to a lingering death.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
This analysis, if any one takes the trouble to read it, will suffice to show the sprightliness of Gozzi's invention, and also the essential weakness of his artistic method. The magic and the transformations at the close are mechanical. The fate of the Green Bird is connected by no proper motive with the fate of Tartaglia and the twins. Calmon and the statues, allegorically useful, are in like manner independent of the main dramatic action. Ninetta's doom is atrocious. Tartaglia is only saved from being disgusting by his burlesque absurdity.
XI.
In the spring of 1762, having exhibited Le Tre Melarancie, Il Corvo, Il Rè Cervo, and Turandot, Gozzi proved that he had won the game against Chiari and Goldoni. Sacchi's company removed from the theatre at S. Samuele to a more commodious house at S. Angelo. Chiari retired to his native city, Brescia, and left off writing for the stage. Goldoni departed for Paris. None of Goldoni's biographers deny that he took this step in consequence of Gozzi's triumph. In his own Memoirs he omitted all references to the literary quarrels of the years 1756-62; and he gives excellent reasons, quite independent of Gozzi, for his setting off to seek fortune in the French capital. Certainly, the last piece he presented to the Venetian public, Una delle ultime sere di Carnovale, was received with enthusiasm. "It closed the theatrical year of 1761," he says;[90] "and the evening of Shrove Tuesday brought me an ovation. The theatre rang with thunders of applause, among which could be distinguished these farewells: A happy journey! Come back to us! Be sure you do not fail to do so! I confess that I was touched to tears." Yet the simultaneous retirement of both Chiari and Goldoni at this critical moment justifies our believing that the latter judged it expedient to leave Venice after the revolution effected by Gozzi. He did so without ill-will on either side. Count Gasparo Gozzi, Carlo's brother, and a distinguished member of the Granelleschi, undertook the charge of seeing a new edition of Goldoni's plays through the press in his absence.
For some years after this event, Carlo Gozzi and Sacchi's company had the theatres of Venice pretty much at their own disposal. But the success of the Fiabe was ephemeral. Before their author's death, he saw his own dramatic novelties cast into the shade and Goldoni's realistic comedies restored to favour. A poet of such eminence as Goethe, surveying all things Italian with curiosity in 1786, paid a well-considered tribute to Gozzi's sympathy with the Venetian public, praised the energy and nature of the Commedia dell' Arte, but reserved his highest panegyric for a representation of Goldoni's Baruffe Chiozzote at the theatre of S. Luca.[91] "At last I am able to say that I have seen a comedy," are the emphatic words with which Goethe opens a detailed description of this piece.
In the course of the last hundred years, Goldoni has secured a signal and irreversible victory over his rival. One of the best theatres at Venice is called by his name. His house is pointed out by gondoliers to tourists. His statue stands almost within sight of the Rialto on the Campo S. Bartolommeo, where people most do congregate. His comedies are repeatedly given by companies of celebrated actors. Gozzi's Fiabe have been relegated to the marionette stages, where some of their scenari in a mutilated form may still be seen. There exist no memorials to his fame in Venice. Not even a tablet with the words Qui nacque Carlo Gozzi is to be found upon the ancient palace at S. Cassiano. The sacristan of the church, where his dust is gathered to his fathers, cannot point to the Gozzi vault.