"As I knew still less of Italian, I gathered the necessary fruit of my birth in an amphibious country, and of the precious education I had received."
They proceeded afterwards to Florence, Rome, and Naples. At the latter place he obtained permission from his own court, through the intercession of the Sardinian minister, to leave the tutor, and travel for the future alone. Attended only by his faithful servant Elia, who had taken the place of the worthless Andrea, and for whom he felt a great affection, he returned to Rome, and had the honor of kissing the Pope's toe. The pontiff's manner pleased him so much, that he felt no repugnance to going through the ceremony, although he had read Fleury, and knew the real value of the aforesaid toe.
Having obtained leave to travel for another year, he determined to visit France, England, and Holland. He went first to Venice, and there was assailed by that melancholy, ennui, and restlessness, peculiar to his character.
"I spent many days without leaving the house, my chief employment being to stand at the window, and make signs, and hold brief dialogues with a young lady opposite; the rest of the day I spent in sleeping, in thinking of I know not what, and generally crying, I knew not why."
All through life he was subject to these periodical fits, which came on every spring, and materially influenced his powers of composition.
He proceeded afterwards to France, expecting to be delighted with Paris; but on arriving there he found it so unlike what he had anticipated, that he burst into a violent fit of passion at having made so much haste, undergone so much fatigue, and had his fancy excited to such a pitch of frenzy, only to plunge into that filthy sewer, as he calls it! His anger is quite ludicrous; but he, notwithstanding, remained there five months, during which time he was presented to Louis XV. at Versailles, but the cold reception he met with greatly annoyed him.
"Although I had been told that the king did not speak to ordinary foreigners, and although I did not care much for his notice, yet I could not swallow the Jove-like superciliousness of the monarch, who surveyed from head to foot the people presented to him, without appearing to receive the slightest impression. It was as if somebody said to a giant, 'I beg to present an ant to you;' and he were either to stare or to smile, or to say, it may be, 'Oh, what a little creature!'"
He was as much delighted with England as he had been disgusted with France. He falls into perfect raptures when speaking of our national character and our national institutions, and regrets that it was not in his power to remain here for ever. In June, 1768, he went to Holland, and at the Hague fell violently in love with the wife of a rich gentleman whom he knew. When the lady was obliged to go into Switzerland, he was thrown into such a state of frenzy that he attempted to commit suicide, by tearing off the bandages from the place where he had had himself bled, under pretence of illness. His servant, however, suspected his intentions, and prevented him from carrying his resolution into effect. He gradually recovered his spirits, and determined to return to Italy. On reaching Turin, he was seized by a desire to study. The book in which he took most delight was Plutarch's Lives:
"Some of these, such as Timoleon, Cæsar, Brutus, Pelopidas, and Cato, I read four or five times over, with such transports of shouting, crying, and fury, that any person in the next room must have thought me mad. On reading any particular anecdotes of those great men, I used often to spring to my feet in the greatest agitation, and quite beside myself, shedding tears of grief and rage at seeing myself born in Piedmont, and in an age and under a government where nothing noble could be said or done, and where it was almost useless to think or to feel."
His brother-in-law now strongly urged him to marry, and he consented, although unwillingly, that negotiations should be entered into on his behalf with the family of a young, noble, and rich heiress, whose beautiful black eyes would, doubtless, soon have driven Plutarch out of his head. The end, however, was that she married somebody else, to Alfieri's internal satisfaction. "Had I been tied down by a wife and children, the Muses would certainly have bid me good bye."