Maffei left the box at once, repaired to Signor Gratarol, and soon returned with the answer that his friend was absolutely determined to come to my house for the interview.
I spent a large part of that night in racking my brains to imagine what Gratarol could possibly hope to gain by this new step of his. Giving the problem{279} up as insoluble, I laid a scheme of my own, the only one which seemed to me at all practicable, and which I resolved to propose to him upon the morning of the 16th. It was as follows. I should write a prologue addressed to the public, saying that my comedy was going to be stopped after the evening of the 17th, at my own request, because it had been turned to bad account and misinterpreted, to the injury of myself and persons whom I esteemed as friends. This prologue could be printed and distributed before the performance of the play. Then Signor Gratarol and I would go together, and take our places amicably side by side in a front box of the theatre. The whole world would see that we were not at enmity, and I should be able to convince him, as the play proceeded, that Don Adone was not intended to be a personal satire on himself.
The plan approved itself to my judgment, and I went to sleep, persuaded that I had found a satisfactory way out of our worst difficulties.
Next morning, the 16th of January, I rose betimes, entered my study, and hurriedly composed a little prologue of twenty-four lines. Hardly had I finished the last verse, when my servant announced Signor Gratarol in a sonorous voice. Yes, there was the raging Cerberus Gratarol, accompanied by the gentle lamb Maffei! And all hopes of concealing this visit from the public had vanished. My servant had their names upon his lips, and Venice would soon be{280} saying that my humiliated enemy had gone to prostrate himself at his persecutor's feet.[67]
Gratarol did not make his entrance like a suitor. He was closely masked, and came swaggering into my tiny workroom with the swaying gait which is called "English style." When he raised his mask, the steam from his face rose to the ceiling, and I could see by his rolling eyes, quivering lips, spasms of pain, and frensied contortions, that the man suffered like the Titan with the vulture preying on his liver.
We all three took seats, and Signor Gratarol opened the conference by saying: "I have come to visit you, not as a suitor, but as a reasoner upon the merits of this case. Pray do not interrupt the thread of my argument, but give me patient hearing to the end." For upwards of an hour he thundered and declaimed like an infuriate Demosthenes against what he chose to call my "vindictive comedy." "Not that the personage of Don Adone has the least resemblance to my character," he added, "but that you meant it to hurt and outrage me." Starting on this note, he proceeded to dilate upon the splendour of his birth and education, his widespread celebrity, the offices of State he had discharged, his election as ambassador{281} at Naples, and the magnificent career which lay before him. "From the height of all this glory," said he, "I have fallen in a moment, and become the public laughing-stock through your comedy!" Then he touched upon his enemies among the great, and alluded significantly to a certain lady who had vowed his ruin. That led up to a moving picture of his present distress: "When I pass along the streets or cross the piazza in my magisterial robes, the very scum and canaille swarm around me, leave their shops, and point me out as the secretary to the Senate who is being turned to ridicule in your Droghe d'Amore." He writhed upon his seat and tears fell from his eyes as he spoke these words, never reflecting that it was not my play, but his own bad management which had brought these tragi-comic woes upon him.
Resuming the thread of his discourse, he imprudently let out the fact that during the last few days he had presented a petition—to what tribunal he did not say—for the suppression of my piece. Then, hastily catching himself up, as though he had gone farther than he meant, "In short," he added, "every door has been shut against me!" I was not so stupid as not to guess the awful tribunal to which an ambassador-elect had applied, and by which he had been rejected. Opening my eyes wide, I turned them meaningly on my worthy friend Maffei, as though to ask: "What devil of a visitor have you brought here for my torment?"{282}
At length the pith of the oration came to light. Admitting me to be susceptible of justice, humane feeling, religion, honour, magnanimity, and a host of other virtues, Gratarol laid it down as an axiom that "I was able and that I ought to stop the performance of the comedy upon the evening of the 17th, and so long as the world lasted." "Able and ought," exclaimed I to myself; "when I have made it clear to Maffei that I cannot stir a finger to prevent the play, and have already been rebuked by a respectable magistrate for attempting to do so!" I perceived that Maffei had omitted to inform Gratarol of my powerlessness. However, I determined to hear his speech to the end in patience. He now proceeded to demonstrate my power by asserting that Sacchi was not in a position to refuse any of my requests;[68] Sacchi had declared he would be governed by me in the matter of the comedy; Sacchi was independent of the patrician Vendramini; it was consequently my duty to put pressure upon Sacchi; all I had to do was to go to Sacchi and forbid the performance. "If you do not do so," he continued, "you will become deservedly an object of hatred to your country; everybody regards you as the author of my misfortunes, and the public{283} is on the point of turning round to take my side against you." I knew that this was unluckily only too probable; but the painful position in which we were both placed had been created, not by my malice, but by his credulity and blundering.
When this oration came to an end, I replied as briefly and as calmly as I could. I began by observing that even if I had the power to stop the play, I should expose myself to the greatest misconceptions. Everybody would believe that it had been suspended by an order from the magistracy in consequence of its libellous character. But that was not the real question at issue. The question was whether I had or had not the power to do this. By a succinct enumeration of all the incidents connected with the revision of the comedy, I proved that neither myself nor Sacchi could interfere with a performance officially commanded and announced for to-morrow evening. Gratarol put in abruptly: "What you are saying is irrelevant and inconsequential. My reasoning has made it certain that you can and ought to stop the play to-morrow and in perpetuity." At this point I begged to remind him that he had recently applied to a supreme tribunal—by his own admission, let drop in the hurry of his cogent reasoning—and that "the door had been shut in his face." It was of little use to argue with Signor Gratarol. To every thing I said he kept exclaiming: "Nonsense, nonsense! You can and must stop the performance."{284}
Wishing to cut matters short, but not without the greatest difficulty, and only by the assistance of Signor Maffei, I got him to listen to the plan I had devised that morning, and read him out my prologue. It was composed in a popular style, and ran as follows: