On the days when she was not on duty at the theatre, I used to accompany her openly to the opera and playhouses and other places of diversion. She had her cover laid at my house, and she frequently dined there in company with her husband, whom I liked for his modest and civil manners. I also managed to introduce her into society. Many of the noble or wealthy families of Venice took pleasure in receiving members of Sacchi's troupe at their houses. At first Teodora Ricci was excluded from such invitations, so cruelly had her character been blackened by female jealousy and malice. I made myself responsible for her good behaviour, and removed the prejudices which placed her at this disadvantage. Under my protection, she went to fashionable dinner-parties and polite assemblies; I also introduced both men and women of good manners to her at her own home. Acting with reckless or stupid good faith, I did not foresee how soon the hidden mines of her perverted inclinations and bad early training would explode and cover me with confusion.
Meanwhile her condition improved in other ways.{197} She exchanged the dark, ill-smelling apartment she first occupied for a small but convenient abode. Perhaps I ought to touch upon those material services which she may have from time to time received from me; but if she can forget them, it is easier for me to do so also. I must add that, while I was never blindly enamoured of her, I never found her grasping or rapacious.
The time arrived when my friends the actors were about to leave Venice for the theatres of Bergamo and Milan. Before parting from Teodora, I begged her to remember that she had to some extent my honour in her keeping. She was going into danger, among a crowd of envious persons who would enjoy nothing better than to see her compromise herself and me by levity of conduct. She replied that her wishes and intentions were so firmly bent on abiding by my counsels, that she should like to ratify our alliance by a bond of religion. Would I hold her expected infant at the font? I said that I should be very willing to do so, but that I could not promise to leave Venice to be present at the christening. To this I added jestingly: "Your request is somewhat despotic in the condition it imposes on me. You are thinking more of your own interests than of my affections, which may perchance have been engaged for you. This bond of religion puts an insuperable barrier to my desires." We laughed the matter over, and agreed upon it amicably.{198}
She begged for letters of recommendation to Bergamo and Milan. Knowing how worse than useless such introductions are, I confined myself to one testimonial, addressed to my good friend Signor Stefano Sciugliaga, Secretary of the University at Milan, and to his wife, an estimable couple, full of kindness and distinguished by their virtues. Furnished with this letter, the Ricci left me, and I felt the loss of her at Venice. She went to Bergamo, where she gave birth to a little girl, for whom Sacchi stood my proxy at the font. I discharged the usual duties to the Church, and did what was proper in the circumstances by the mother of my godchild. Teodora pursued her journey to Milan, whence she wrote me a full account of the kindness and courtesy she received from Signor Stefano Sciugliaga and his wife Lucia.
The weariness I feel in writing this chapter makes me measure what my readers must experience in reading it. I therefore cut it short and finish it.
L.
Fresh passages regarding my foolish but persevering friendship for Mme. Ricci.—Highly comical discoveries which involved me further in the line I had adopted.
Sacchi's troupe had just finished their season at Milan, when I received a letter from my friend Sciugliaga,{199} informing me that my new gossip's husband was seriously ill. A celebrated physician of that city declared him to be in the last stage of consumption. This being the case, the interests of his wife and two young children imperatively demanded a separation. Sacchi had returned before the rest of the company, and I immediately communicated the news to him. We settled that it would be best to induce the Ricci's husband to leave Venice for his native air of Bologna, offering him three francs a day for his expenses there, until his health should be sufficiently restored for him to resume his duties. My friend's mother, Emilia Ricci, happened to be in Venice at the time; and I thought that the delicate charge of making this communication to the poor fellow might be intrusted to her. I found her very well disposed to undertake it.
When Signora Ricci arrived, I went to visit her, and was received with all her usual demonstrations of cordiality. She looked extremely thin and pale and downcast. On my asking after her health, she replied with a gesture of despair, and, as though she was afraid of being overheard: "I am at my wits' end; my husband goes on spitting blood. Yet I must sleep with him; I am living in hourly dread for myself and my poor children." I did my best to calm her by describing the plan on which Sacchi and her mother had agreed with me. But days flew by, and her mother, why I know not, never made{200} the necessary communication. Meanwhile the man grew worse, and the poor young wife had at last to take this disagreeable duty on herself. She discharged it with a judgment and a feeling which raised her in my esteem. Her husband took the announcement in a Christian spirit, and set off for Bologna, committing his wife and family to me with streaming eyes. I may incidentally remark that the Milanese physician had mistaken his case. Rest among his relatives restored him to a better state of health, and after some months he was able to return to Venice and resume work at the theatre. But the separation between him and his wife continued from this time forward.
The absence of her husband altered my relations to Signora Ricci, and made her position very delicate. I told her frankly that it would be more prudent if I discontinued my daily visits to her house. We should have plenty of opportunities for meeting in the green-room of the theatre. To this she replied: "So, then! In the midst of my enemies, without a husband, on the eve of being made a widow, with two children, I am to be left alone, abandoned by my friends!" Pale, thin, and out of health, she spoke these words with such an accent of intense sorrow that my resolution was shaken. I promised to alter nothing in my conduct with regard to her, only stipulating that she, on her side, should be careful not to compromise us both by any imprudence{201} of behaviour. How ill-judged this yielding to compassion and inclination was, will appear too plainly in the sequel.