“‘It’s your own fault. You are a handsome fellow, and that makes you difficult.’
“I entreated him to get me a position with a widower or orphans, and, after some efforts, he informed me that he had found just what I wanted. The young Duke of Villareggia, who had lost his father and mother, and who had neither sisters nor aunts, was being educated by his uncle the cardinal. He already had a tutor, but wanted a professor of languages and literature. I was received into this post, and found it not only agreeable, but lucrative. The cardinal was a man of cultivation and intellect; and the nephew, now thirteen years of age, had a good mind and an amiable disposition. I became much attached to him, and brought him on rapidly, while at the same time pursuing my own studies with much ardor; for I had a lodging to myself, and all my evenings at my own disposal. The cardinal was so well satisfied with me, that he paid me quite liberally, so that I might dispense with seeking other pupils, and devote my self exclusively to the duke.
“For about a year, my conduct was studious and regular. I had suffered so much sorrow, and felt so deeply my social isolation, that my views of life were, perhaps, rather too serious. I might have become a mere pedant, had not the cardinal taken it into his head to urge me, in the most elegant and graceful manner, to mingle in the follies and corruptions of the day. He succeeded in making me a man of society, for which I am not sure that I am bound to be grateful. Gradually I came to waste a great deal of time on my toilet, and on my pleasures and intrigues. The cardinal’s palace was the rendezvous of all the wits of the day, and of the principal celebrities of the city. I was not expected to cultivate the moral character of my pupil, but merely to supply him with superficial accomplishments and pleasing social qualities. As for myself, all that was required of me was to make myself agreeable to everybody. This was not difficult, among people so amiable and frivolous. I was considered charming; indeed more so than was best for an orphan without position, fortune, or prospects.
“In the course of time I became quite dissipated, and was decidedly on the road to ruin. Indeed, I was encouraged, and, as it were, pushed downward in this career by all sorts of influences, and had nothing to restrain me but the memory of my parents, and the fear of becoming unworthy of the name which they had bequeathed me. I ought to have told you that my adoptive father had directed me, in his will, to assume the name of Cristiano Goffredi; and that I was thus known at Naples. With serious and learned people, this honorable name was an excellent recommendation, but it was thoroughly plebeian, and I too easily forgot that I needed, therefore, to exercise great prudence and reserve in my intercourse with the young nobles with whom I was in the habit of associating at the cardinal’s house. I suffered myself to be carried away by their engaging manners, and was much liked, because I had neither the awkward manners nor the austere principles of a professional pedagogue. I was invited everywhere, and was a favorite member of all the gay assemblies of the most fashionable youth of the city.
“The cardinal congratulated me upon my ability to reconcile suppers, balls, and late hours with the accuracy and lucidity which I unfailingly brought to the instruction of his nephew. Yet I myself perceived very plainly, and suffered from the consciousness, that I was no longer cultivating my own intellect with sufficient assiduity. I felt that I had stopped short in my progress, that I was insensibly becoming a mere showy and shallow talker, that I was turning into a parlor comedian and poet; and furthermore, was laying up nothing from my salary with a view to securing my future independence and respectability. My linen was too fine and my brains were too empty; in short, I had abandoned myself to dissipation and vacuity of mind, and from between these prison-walls there was great danger that I would never escape.
“As a usual thing, I banished these reflections from my mind, but they sometimes made me very anxious. And then, the pleasures that were intoxicating me so did not give me any real enjoyment, after all. At the home of my parents, and in their society, I had experienced nobler enjoyments, more genuine amusements. I retraced, in memory, the delightful walks we had taken together, always with a serious purpose, which afforded us a pure satisfaction, while, in the feverish activity of my present existence, I was conscious of being in realty as languid and exhausted as if I had been living in utter idleness. I began to dream again of the noble enjoyments of the adventurous traveller; and when I looked at my purse, which was always empty, I asked myself whether I could not have made a better use of the money that I earned by hard work; whether it would not have been more to my advantage to devote it to satisfying my genuine physical tastes and intellectual necessities, instead of throwing it away in diversions that wearied my body and exhausted my mind. And then suddenly I felt like a stranger, even in my home. I thought how foreign to my nature all my surroundings were in this country, where I was not rooted by any vital family ties; its frivolous society, its servile political condition, its enervating climate and indolent population. I felt, at the same time, more energetic and more thoughtful than this people. In spite of my twenty-three years and my poverty, I begun to consider whether I would not marry, so that I might have a home of my own, a motive of reform, a serious object in life. But when I confided these perplexities and moral anxieties to the cardinal, he laughed at me for a foolish fellow.
“‘You drank too much, or worked too much, last night,’ he said, ‘and your head is full of vapors. Go and drive them away with Cintia or Fiammetta, but don’t marry them, of all things.’
“I loved the cardinal, for he was a good-hearted and agreeable man; yet, though he was paternal, and unaffectedly kind to me, I saw plainly that he was rather amiable than loving. What he wanted was to have agreeable people about him, and he valued me because of my social qualities; but he was not the man to retain me in his service very long if I should become melancholy, and hence tiresome.
“I accordingly tried to drive away my thoughts, and to rest contented, like all around me, with the enjoyments of each day, without caring for the morrow. But I could not do it. My dissatisfaction increased, and I could not hide it. I became disgusted with easy successes in love; sensual infatuations, to which women of all ranks seemed to abandon themselves without resistance. Poor, and a plebeian, these intrigues had at first flattered my vanity; but when I saw that my barber, who was a good-looking fellow, was as successful as myself, I contracted a great horror of the marchioness. I became eager to quit Naples, and begged the cardinal to make me a librarian or steward, no matter what, at some one of his villas in Calabria or Sicily; I thirsted for repose and for solitude. But he still laughed at my plans for retirement. In fact he had no faith in them; he thought me no more fit for a steward than for a monk. In this he was right, no doubt; yet it was a misfortune that he retained me, as you will see.
“A second nephew of the cardinal returned from his travels, and became an inmate of the house. This was Marco Melfi, a young man as unintelligent, foolish, indolent, and vain, as his young cousin, Tito Villareggia, was sympathetic and kind-hearted. He made himself disagreeable to everybody; and very soon had several duels on his hands. He was an excellent swordsman, and wounded or killed all his adversaries without receiving a single scratch; and his insolence became, in consequence, perfectly insupportable. I avoided collisions with him as long as possible, but being one day urged beyond endurance by his brutal provocations, I gave him the lie in form, and offered him satisfaction with the sword. This he refused, saying that I was not a gentleman, and darting at me, he attempted to strike me. I, however, flung him down, and left him unhurt, except that he was almost choked with fury. The quarrel made a good deal of noise; and the cardinal, while he acknowledged to me between ourselves that I was in the right, yet begged me to hasten and conceal myself on one of his estates, until Melfi should depart on his travels again.