[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.