This was my one thought, as the above-named gentlemen can bear me witness, when a new turn was given to affairs by a fresh act of Signor Gratarol's imprudence and vindictive rancour. My servant entered and announced that a footman was waiting outside with a letter which he had orders to deliver into my own hands. I left my room, and found the man there at the top of the staircase. He handed me the letter, and stood waiting for my answer. I saw at a glance, before I opened it, from whom it{296} came, broke the seal, and read the following missive:[71]
"Sir Count—Pursuant to the arguments I maintained in your house two mornings ago, the playbill published yesterday entitles me to say that in the whole course of my life I have never met with hypocrisy and imposture equal to yours; and the playbill published this morning proclaims you on the face of it to be no gentleman and a liar.
"Go on, I pray. Satiate your vengeance—vengeance begotten by an amorous passion, in part concealed from the public gaze, possibly not credited by some folk, and which is known to only me in all its real extent. Continue, I say, to rear your masked forehead in the front rank of all those foes who envy, calumniate, persecute, and hate me. To-day it is your turn to laugh. Perhaps this will not always be so. Perhaps the vicissitudes of human life will one day reverse your unworthy triumph and my unmerited oppression.
From my house, the 18th of January 1776/1777,
"Pietro Antonio Gratarol."
Having perused this fine flower of Pietro Antonio Gratarol, nobleman of Padua, his eloquence, I folded up the paper, and told the footman, with a smile{297} which concealed my boiling indignation, and saved him from being kicked down the staircase at the risk of his neck, that he might go back to his master and say that I fully understood the contents of his note.
Returning to the room where I had left Balbi and Todeschini, I put Gratarol's letter into the hands of the former, and said: "Your Excellency will learn from this to what annoyances I am exposed by the recall of my comedy." He turned pale, and so did Todeschini, when they gathered the contents of the cowardly, disgusting document.
Balbi asked me what I meant to do. I replied, putting the last touches to my toilet, that the right thing for me to do would be to compel Sacchi at once to play my comedy every night until the end of the Carnival. "Gratarol's letter has certainly been spread broadcast before now over Venice. I do not mean to give him an answer. What I propose would be the best means of punishing Sacchi for his want of faith—since the theatre will certainly be empty—and Gratarol for his delirious importunity. But, if your Excellency permits me, I shall walk abroad. I should like to let a certain lady, who bolstered up my comedy against my will, and who protected a reckless avaricious comedian—I should like her to see and read in this letter to what she has condemned my peaceable nature, incapable of injuring a fly, by her wrong-headed, whimsical, unbecoming pique against a madman."{298}
While I spoke thus to my friend Balbi, the blood was boiling in my veins. Concealed from him, I had quite other plans in preparation. They were not consistent with philosophy; they were not in agreement with the Gospel. Some time later, but not till many days had passed and these heats had cooled, I recognised and condemned them as wrong and reckless, begotten by the blindness of the natural man deprived of reason for the moment.[72]
Signor Balbi offered to accompany me to the noble lady, Signora Caterina Dolfin Tron; and I was rejoiced to have so excellent a witness of our interview. On presenting ourselves, and being received with her customary gaiety, I contented myself with these few words: "Your Excellencies have been amusing yourselves with the Droghe d'Amore, and its recall to the stage. The amusements which fall to my poor share are these." I handed her the letter.
She cast her eyes over the page, and I could read upon her countenance and by the trembling of her hands, how deeply she was moved. It is right for me to add that, strongly as I condemned the revengeful caprice against Signor Gratarol which caused this lady to involve me in a series of revolting annoyances,{299} I felt a thrill of gratitude for the cordial emotions expressed at that moment by her every gesture. I saw that she felt for me. I saw that, although her judgment had been spoiled by a course of unwholesome reading, and by conversation with the vaunted esprits forts of our "unprejudiced" age, her heart remained in the right place and uncontaminated.[73]