In this same year, 1766, my brothers warmly urged me to revive the lawsuit against Marchese Terzi of Bergamo.[34] Since our family documents had been dispersed, and only three old wills and some worm-eaten summaries remained to guide me, I obtained an injunction ordering the defendant to produce the deeds whereby he claimed the disputed{161} property, and the papers relating to several suits between his ancestors and ours. At last two enormous chests, full of musty writings, were delivered at the Magistracy of the Avvogaria. Perhaps my adversaries thought to dash my spirits and damp my ardour by this ocean of pages which had to be explored. If so, they were mistaken. I procured one of those licenses, which are technically called courtesies, from Signor Daniele Zanchi, the defendant's advocate, to study the documents at his chambers, and set myself down with imperturbable phlegm to peruse millions of lines in antique characters, faded, half-effaced, semi-Gothic, and for the most part hieroglyphical. I selected those which seemed to the purpose, and had forty-two volumes of transcripts filled at my cost by Signor Zanchi's copyists.
Painful circumstances leave ineffaceable impressions on the memory. The examination of those vast masses of manuscript, word by word and letter by letter, so different from delightful literature in prose or verse, taxed every nerve and fibre. I well remember that my study of them lasted over more than two months, in the dead of a hard snowy winter. Signor Zanchi, taking pity on my shivering wretchedness, kindly furnished me with a brazier of live coals; and yet I thought, what with the irksome labour and the cold, that I should have to breathe my last between the walls of the fortress of my enemies.{162}
I shall not weary my readers with a detailed account of this tedious lawsuit. My brother Almorò, whose heart was always in the right place, contributed to the expenses according to his means. My brother Francesco, remaining a wary economist, refused to exceed an annual payment of 150 lire during the progress of the suit. My brother Gasparo only lent his name and assent. The following anecdote is characteristic of his easy-going, popularity-loving temperament. Some gentlemen, friends and supporters of the Marquis, asked him with serious faces: "What the devil is this annoyance you are causing Marchese Terzi?" To which he shrugged his shoulders and answered: "I know nothing about the matter. They are devices of my brother Carlo, a litigious fellow, who thinks that he is in the right here." He did not mean, I fully believe, to shun responsibility and odium by shifting the blame to my shoulders. This answer was only of a piece with the pacific indolence which made him bear infinite wretchedness in his own home.
In the course of two years I had to expend 17,000 lire on the costs of this suit; and had it not been for the generosity of friends, among whom Signor Innocenzio Massimo stood first, Marchese Terzi would have scored one of those victories which make us inclined to doubt of Providence. Beside the anxiety and incessant labour which preyed upon my health and spirits, I was annoyed by my adversary's powerful{163} friends, who went about the town denouncing me for a quarrelsome, vexatious, captious, and inequitable fellow. Rude rebukes addressed to me by such persons I met with significant smiles and silence, never deigning to take up the cudgels in my own defence against accusations which I knew to be discourteous and baseless. In addition to all these sources of discomfort, I had to fight the battle single-handed; for my excellent friend and advocate, Signor Antonio Testa, was compelled by stress of business to leave me in the heat of action.
It is not to be wondered at that I fell ill at last. But what will seem more wonderful, nay, almost incredible, is that I sought distraction during my few leisure hours in planning and composing dramatic pieces. I used to take sheets of paper on which I had sketched the outlines of scenes in my pocket down to a coffee-house on the Riva degli Schiavoni. There I engaged a room facing San Giorgio, had coffee brought, and ordered pen and ink. Thus furnished, I forgot my troubles for a while in the elaboration of soliloquies and dialogues. It was in this way that, while my suit dragged on through three tempestuous years, I produced the Augel Belverde, the Rè de'Genj, the Donna Vendicativa, the Caduta di Donna Elvera, and the Pubblico Segreto. I flatter myself that none of these plays betrayed the melancholy and distraction of a harassed brain. They were welcomed with enthusiasm by the public,{164} and brought fame and profit to my friends the actors.
After a long course of anxious litigation, complicated by somewhat tortuous proceedings on the part of my opponents, the cause was settled in the following way. I obtained as compensation for my claims a farm of about forty-six acres in the Paduan district, several houses in Venice, some substantial and some ruinous, a sum of money in the funds of the Mint, and three thousand ducats by way of repayment of arrears. A solemn agreement was signed, which may God preserve unbroken through all the centuries to come! After paying the costs and debts contracted in this long campaign, and assigning their portions of the balance to my brothers, I took breath again, like a man broken by a tedious and disastrous journey, who stretches out his wearied limbs upon a bed of down.
XLIV.
The beginning of dissensions in Sacchi's company.—My attitude of forbearance and ridiculous heroisms.
Having spent ten years of serene recreation among my professional friends, the time had come for clouds to gather on the horizon. Le due notti affannose, my last dramatic venture, was the source of much profit to Sacchi. But the company, while gaining strength{165} from actors hired to sustain serious parts, began to degenerate in their behaviour. Though they professed the same severe morality as formerly, I noticed signs of change and of dissension. Differences between relatives spread the seeds of future dissolution. The imported actors helped the theatre, but introduced pernicious ideas into this previously happy family. They criticised the administration of the property; accused the managers of injustice, tyranny, even fraud; sympathised with those who thought themselves oppressed; threw stones, and carefully concealed the hands which launched them. Pluming themselves upon their sapience, they contrived to persuade the troupe that the plays I gave for nothing were not so beneficial as the latter blindly believed. They ascribed the crowds which filled the theatre to the attraction of stage decorations and their own spirited performance. Not unlike the fly in Æsop's fable, they exclaimed: "Look at the dust which we are raising!" By artfully reckoning the cost of putting my fables on the stage, and by insinuating calumnies against the managers, they brought some of the sharers into a state of mutiny, made them depreciate my services, and stirred up anger and suspicion against Sacchi. Finally, they got them to think it would be more advantageous to exchange their shares for salaries, and prepared them for hating one another cordially.
The older and more sagacious comedians still continued{166} to pay me court and beg for my poetical assistance. I thought it, however, wiser to suspend my collaboration for a year or two, without showing annoyance, or letting it be known that I was aware of what was being said against me. I could not take a better way of bringing them back to reason; and my private engagements provided me with a good pretext for withdrawing my assistance.