"The moment has arrived for me to testify the cordial friendship which I

entertain for you. I regret that you have promised to join those

fire-eaters this evening. On your honour and secrecy I know that I can

count. I am sure that you will not reveal what I am about to disclose;

else the higher powers, whom we are bound to regard, might be involved,

and cowardice might be suspected in those whose courage is indisputable.

This preamble will enable you to judge what I think of you, and to

measure the extent of my friendship. I am the man in the mask. To-night

there will be four blunderbusses in the alley. I shall lose my life; but

several will lose theirs before the lane is forced. I am sorry that you

are in the affair. Contrive to get out of your engagement. Let the rest

come, and enjoy their fill of pastime at the cost of life or limb."

This blunderbuss of an oration took me by surprise. But I did not lose

my senses or my tongue, and answered to the following effect:--

"I am amazed that you should have begun by professing friendship and

preaching caution. You do not seem to understand the first elements of

the one or the simple meaning of the other. I am obliged to you for one

thing only, your belief that I am incapable of divulging what you have

just told me. Upon this point alone your discernment is not at fault. I

would rather die than expose you. Yet you want me, under threats, to

break my word, and to render myself contemptible in the eyes of all my

comrades. This you call a proof of friendship. It is as clear as day,

too, that you have yielded to a hussy's importunities, risking your own

life and the lives of your friends upon a silly point of honour in a

shameful quarrel. This is the proof of your prudence. If you withdraw

from the engagement, no harm will be done, and cowardice will only be

imputed to a nameless mask. But if I break my word, you cannot free me

from the imputation of having proved myself a renegade and a dastard. I

shall become an object of scorn and abhorrence to the whole army. If I

act as you desire, my oath of secrecy to you will violate the laws of

friendship, prudence, everything which men hold sacred. Your promise of

secrecy again puts my honour in peril. How can you be sure that one of

your accomplices will not privily inform his Excellency of your name and

your mad enterprise? Where shall I then be? No: it is clearly your duty

to obey the counsels dictated by my loyal friendship and my sound

prudence. Leave the alley open; and then you will in truth oblige me.

Make love to your Tonina with something more to the purpose than a

blunderbuss. Her physical shape excuses your weakness for her; her mind

deserves your scorn; but I am not going to preach sermons on objects

worthy or unworthy of love; I feel compassion for human frailty."

It was obvious that Signor Simeone C---- felt the force of these

arguments. But he writhed with rage under them, and showed no sign of

consenting. In his fierce Dalmatian way he burst into bare

protestations, swore that he would never quit the field, and wound up

with a vow to sell his life as dearly as man ever did.

At this point I judged it needful to administer a dose of histrionic

artifice. After gazing at him for some seconds with eyes which spoke

volumes, I assumed the declamatory tone of a tragedian, and exclaimed:

"Well then, I promise to be the first to enter the lane this evening,

and, without attacking you, I shall offer my breast to your fire. I have

only this way left of proving to you that you are in no real sense of

the word my friend." Then I turned my back with a show of passion,

taking care, however, to retire at a slow pace. Except for the ferocity

instilled by education, he was at bottom an excellent good-hearted

fellow. Seizing me by the arm, he begged me wait a moment. I saw that he

was touched, and maintaining the tragic tone, I persuaded him to leave

the access to the alley free, without resigning his exclusive right to

the Tonina. For my part, I undertook never to reveal our secret. This

promise I have kept for thirty-five years. Lapse of time and the

probability of his decease--for he was much older than I--excuse me for

now breaking it.

On three following nights I joined the allied forces at the

billiard-room, armed to the teeth, and with a white ribbon flying from

my hat-band. I was always the first to brave the blunderbusses, being

sure that no resistance would be offered. Indeed, the victory, on which

we piqued ourselves, had been won beforehand in my battle of words. The

culpable conduct of Tonina, a girl of the people, who had exposed so

many gentlemen to serious danger, remained fixed in my mind. I shall

relate the sequel to this incident, which took a comic turn, in the next

chapter. For the present, it is enough to add that Signer Simeone C----'s

infatuation for this corsair of Venus rapidly declined, as is the wont

of passions begotten by masculine appetite and feminine avarice.

Tonina, however, did not lack lovers, and the badness of her nature

continued to spread discord and foment disorder in our circle.

XIII.

_The fair Tonina is rudely rebuked by me upon an accidental

occasion in the theatre.--My reconciliation with the young

woman.--Reflections on my life in Dalmatia._

One evening during the last carnival of my three years' service, the

Provveditore Generale bespoke an improvised comedy at the Court-theatre.

The officers arranged a supper-party and a ball in private rooms,

intending to pass the night gaily when the farce was over. I had to play

the part of Luce, married to Pantalone, a vicious old man, broken in

health and fortune. I was reduced to extreme poverty, with a daughter in

the cradle, the fruit of my unhappy marriage.

There was a night-scene, in which I had to soliloquise, while rocking my

child and singing it to sleep with some old ditty. This lullaby I

interrupted from time to time with the narrative of my misfortunes and

with sallies which made the audience die of laughter. Bursts of applause

brought the house down as I told my story, enlarged upon my reasons for

marrying an old man, related the incidents of my life, alluded in

modest monosyllables to what I had to bear, described what a fine figure

of a woman I had been, and what a scarecrow matrimony had made me. I

complained of cold, hunger, evil treatment. I did not make milk enough

to suckle my baby; and what I made was sour, nay, venomous from fits of

rage and all the sufferings I had to go through. This bad milk gave my

darling, the fruit of my womb, the stomach-ache. It kept bleating all

night like a lamb, and would not let me close an eye. The night was far

advanced. I was waiting for my old fool of a husband. What could be

keeping him abroad? He must surely be in the Calle del Pozzetto,

notorious at Zara for its evil fame. I had a presentiment of coming

troubles, moralised upon the woes of life, and burst into a flood of

tears, which made everybody laugh. The truth was that one of our

officers, Signor Antonio Zeno, who played the part of Pantalone

excellently, had not turned up at the proper time to enter into dialogue

with me. Until he arrived, I was forced to continue my soliloquy, which

had already occupied the attention of the audience full fifteen minutes.

A good extempore actor ought never to lose presence of mind, or to be at

a loss for material. In order to prolong the scene, I pretended that my

baby was crying, and that it would not go to sleep for all my lullabies

and cradle-rocking. In a fit of impatience I took it up, unlaced my

dress, and laid it with endearing caresses to my breasts to quiet it.

This fresh absurdity, together with my lamentations over the

non-existent teats I said the greedy little thing was biting, kept my

audience in good-humour. From time to time I turned my eyes to the

sides, being really disturbed at Signor Zeno-Pantalone's non-appearance,

and racking my brains in vain for some new matter to sustain the

soliloquy.

Just then I happened to catch sight of Tonina seated in one of the front

boxes of the theatre, resplendent with beauty, and attired in a gala

dress which cast a glaring light upon her dubious career. She was

laughing with more assurance and sense of fun than anybody at my jokes.

The catastrophe which she had nearly caused flashed suddenly across my

mind. I felt that I had discovered a treasure; and plunged like

lightning into a new subject. What I proceeded to do was bold, I admit,

yet quite within the limits of good taste upon our amateur stage, where

personal allusions were allowed perhaps a little too liberally. I called

my doll-baby by the name of Tonina, and addressed my speech to it. I

caressed it, admired its features, flattered my maternal heart with the

hope that Tonina would grow up a lovely girl. So far as I was concerned.

I vowed to give her a good education, by example, precepts,

chastisement, and watchful care. Then, taking a tone of gravity, I

warned her that if, in spite of all my trouble, she fell into such and

such faults, such and such acts of imprudence, such and such immoral

ways, and caused such and such disturbances, she would be the worst

Tonina in the world, and I prayed God to cut her days short rather in

the cradle. All the evil things I mentioned were faithfully copied from

anecdotes about Tonina in the front box, with which my audience were

only too well acquainted.

Never in my whole life have I known an improvised soliloquy to be so

tumultuously applauded as this of mine was. The spectators at one point

of the speech turned their faces with a simultaneous movement towards

Tonina in her gala dress, clapping their hands and laughing till the

theatre rang again. His Excellency, who had some inkling of the siren's

ways, honoured my unexpected satire with explosions of unconcealed

merriment. Tonina backed out of her box in a fit of fury, and escaped

from the theatre, cursing my soliloquy and the man who made it.

Pantalone finally arrived, and the comedy ended without any episode more

mirthful than the scene between me and my baby.

Do not imagine that I have related this incident to brag about it.

Although the young woman in question was a girl of the people, whose

dissolute behaviour and ill-nature had been the cause of many

misadventures, and though the Provveditore Generale applauded my

performance, I blamed myself, when it was over, for yielding to a mere

impulse of vanity, and exhibiting my power as a comedian at the cost of

committing an act of imprudence and indiscretion. Much has to be

condoned to youth which is never conceded to maturity.

I have mentioned that a ball and supper-party had been arranged by us

officers after the play, and that I was a member of the company. I went

in my costume of Luce, partly to save time, and partly to carry on the

joke. Tonina was among the guests. She did not expect me, and was

sitting in a corner, angry and out of spirits. When she saw me, one

would have thought she had set eyes on the fiend; she looked as though

she meant to leave the room. I took her hand, and protested I would

rather go than that the company should lose its loveliest ornament. I

vowed that she was adorably beautiful, and that it was a pity she was

not equally good. I begged her in gentle terms to take the accident of

the evening into account, to reflect upon the universal verdict given by

the audience on her ways of life, and to guard against the private

flatterers who blinded her to the truth. I told her that God had meant

to send in her an angel, and not a devil into this world. I interwove so

many praises with so many insolences, and with such complete frankness,

that she could not but laugh. Everybody laughed, down to her very

lovers. She expressed a wish to dance with me. I accepted the

invitation. This looked like a token of peace; but it was only

treachery. While dancing, she exerted all the charms, enticements,

captivating humours, pressures of the hand, and so forth, which her bad

vindictive and seductive nature could suggest to enslave me.

A woman's coquetries directed to some purpose of revenge are always

blind, and give the best advantage to a clever roué. The reason is that

the woman, piqued to the point of seeking a victory at any price, lowers

herself to the utmost, without being aware of what she is conceding. I

was not a roué; and woe to me if I had let myself be snared by the wiles

and artifices of that viper smarting under the sense of recent insult!

Our pleasure party was resumed soon after supper, during which my fair

foe kept me at her side. We broke up about sunrise; and Tonina never

ceased to call me her accursed little devil; that was the sweet

Dalmatian term of endearment which she used. Compelled by these

compliments, I promised to pay her a visit, but I did not keep my word.

I have now given some general notion of my ways of thinking and acting,

my character and conduct, up to the age of eighteen on to twenty.

Nothing but the truth has dictated these reminiscences, from which I

have undoubtedly omitted many things of similar importance. I am sure

that if I had been guilty of anything really wrong during this period,

it would not have escaped either my memory or my pen. I have never

hardened my heart against the stings of remorse, and I would far rather

frankly record facts to my discredit than bear the stings of conscience

by suppressing what is true. Reviewing the veracious picture of myself

which I have painted, friends will see in me a somewhat eccentric young

man, but of harmless disposition; enemies will take me for a worthless

scapegrace; the indifferent, who know me superficially by sight, will

discover some one very different from their conception based on my

external qualities. At the proper place and time I shall account for

this not unreasonable and yet fallacious conception formed of me by

strangers. The reasons will appear clearly in the detailed portrait I

intend to execute of myself, and which will surpass the best work of any

painter.

XIV.

_The end of my three years' service.--I cast up my accounts, and

reckon debts; calculate upon the future, with a sad prevision of

the truth.--My arrival in my home at Venice._

The three years of my military service were nearly at an end, when I

contracted a slow fever, not dangerous to life, but tedious. The time

had come for settling accounts, and seeing how I stood. My family, since

I left home, had furnished me with only two bills of exchange, one for

fourteen, the other for six sequins. My useless duties to the State had

brought me thirty-eight lire per month. Against these receipts I

balanced my expenses: so much for my daily food; so much for my lodging,

clothing, and washing; so much for a servant, indispensable in my

position; so much for two illnesses, together with the small sums spent

on unavoidable pleasures of society. The result was that I found myself

in debt to my friend Massimo for exactly the sum of fifty-six sequins

and sixteen lire, or 200 ducats.[127]

If the necessities of life are not to be considered vices, this debt was

certainly a modest one. Still it weighed upon my mind. I consoled myself

by recalling my friend's nobleness of nature, and felt sure that I

should be able to repay him on reaching home. I computed that the gross

sum I had received during those three years amounted to 480 ducats; and

I did not think I had been a spendthrift in consuming about 150 ducats a

year on my total expenditure. I could indeed have saved something by

attending the table which the Provveditore Generale kept daily for the

officers of his Court and guard, but which his sublime Excellency never

honoured with his presence. Little did he know what a gang of ruffians,

with the exception of a few patient souls constrained by urgent need,

defiled his table, or what low tricks were perpetrated at it. Since the

day of my arrival I had heard the infamous and compromising talk which

went on there, had watched the squabbles between guest and guest, and

guests and serving-men, had seen the cups and platters flying through

the air--and, like a naughty boy perhaps, I preferred to contract a debt

of 200 ducats rather than accept a hospitality so prostituted to vile

uses. I attended this table of Thyestes, as it seemed to me, only when I

could not help it, on the days when I had to mount guard.

The financial statement I have just made will appear to many of my

readers a mere trifle, unworthy of recording here. They are mistaken.

When they have learned in what a state of desolation I found my father's

house, and how I strove to stem the tide of prodigality and waste which

was bringing our family to ruin, they will understand my reasons for

insisting on these trifles. Heads heated by anger and resentment are

only too ready to invent false accusations; and I shall soon be made to

appear a prodigal, a reckless gambler, a consumer of the substance of my

family during the three years I spent abroad. This is why I am so

scrupulous in telling the plain truth about my cost of living in

Dalmatia. I have never been ashamed of letting the whole world know how

modest are my fortunes. I should think it a greater shame to pretend to

possess more than I really own. Riches have always seemed to me to be a

name, and to reside in the imagination. If I cast my eyes on a

carpenter, then raise them to a duke, and finally lift them to a king, I

obtain convincing demonstration of the fact that he alone is rich who

has the mental wealth--to be contented with his lot. Alas! that only I

and many millions upon their deathbed recognise this truth.

My three years were over. The new Provveditore Generale, Jacopo Boldù,

arrived in Dalmatia, and received the staff of office with the usual

formalities from his Excellency Quirini. In my moments of leisure I had

composed several poems in honour of the latter, and had procured others

from Venice. These I copied out in the beautiful handwriting which I

then possessed, sewed them together, added a respectful dedication, and

had them bound in a fine velvet cover. Then I paid my respects to his

Excellency in company with my friend Massimo, and laid my literary

tribute at his feet. I was no Virgil, nor was I born in the golden age

of Augustus. Only my fanaticism for the art of poetry made me imagine

that verses could be anything worth offering as a gift.

The Cavaliere accepted my donation with affability. He said: "I thank

you. At least I have the wherewithal to show that, while a member of my

Court, you have remained at school."

Afterwards I learned that he made a present of this book to the Very

Eminent Cardinal, his uncle, Bishop of Brescia. His Excellency inquired

whether I preferred to return to Venice or to stay in Dalmatia,

occupying the post of cadet noble of cavalry on my promotion. I begged

him to take me in his train to Venice, and he graciously accepted.

Some one else than I would have looked around for testimonials little to

be trusted, which might have kept me fraudulently drawing pay upon the

muster-roll of Venice from a too indulgent Government. But I had

renounced the military career, and had no mind to spunge upon the public

treasury. Our Prince I regarded as a common father, but did not think it

just to saddle him with thievish sons, each one of whom by coaxed

protections, adulations, hypocrisies, and the vilest offices, eats into

the common patrimony of the nation, which ought to be reserved for

urgent needs. I was a poor lad, with a debt of 200 ducats; but I knew

that the services rendered to the State by me constituted no claim upon

the public purse. If I was poor, this came from our being too many in

our family and from the maladministration of our property.

My wants were moderate. I flattered myself that I could satisfy them by

attending to the management of the estate; and I felt sure that my

father, paralysed and speechless as he was, would never refuse to pay

the trifling debt I had contracted. Meanwhile it is not improbable that

my name remained upon the muster-roll long after I left Dalmatia.

Somebody may have pocketed my pay and pilfered from the treasury to this

extent. I was not responsible for this, and had no right to inquire into

the matter, since I never asked to be cashiered in form. Poor I was,

poor I am, and poor I expect to die. At any rate, I am sure that I

should die in desperation if I felt on my deathbed that I had earned a

fortune by deceit, injustice, and intrigue.

It was in the month of October when at last I embarked for Venice on the

galley of his Excellency. Wind and weather were against us. After a

painful voyage of twenty-two days, we came in sight of home, and I drew

breath again. After paying my respects and returning thanks to the

Cavaliere who had brought me back, I set off for our ancestral mansion

at San Cassiano, accompanied by Signor Massimo, whom I had invited to

stay with me upon his way to Padua. There I hoped to be able to pay my

friend some attention by giving him good quarters during his sojourn in

Venice.

XV.

_Disagreeable discoveries relating to our family affairs, which

dissipate all illusions I may have formed._

Leaving the horrors of the galley for the ancient home of my ancestors,

I palpitated between pleasure at escaping into freedom, hope of being

able to make my friend comfortable, and uneasiness lest this hope might

prove ill-founded.

We reached the entrance, and my companion gazed with wonder at the

stately structure of the mansion, which has really all the appearance of

a palace. As a connoisseur of architecture, he complimented me upon its

fine design. I answered, what indeed he was about to discover by

experience, that attractive exteriors sometimes mask discomfort and

annoyance. He had plenty of time to admire the façade, while I kept

knocking loudly at the house-door. I might as well have knocked at the

portal of a sepulchre. At last a woman, named Eugenia, the

guardian-angel of this wilderness, ran to open. To my inquiries she

answered, yawning, that the family were in Friuli, but that my brother

Gasparo was momently expected. Our luggage had now been brought from the

boat, and we began to ascend a handsome marble staircase. No one could

have expected that this fine flight of steps would lead to squalor and

the haunts of indigence. Yet on surmounting the last stair this was what

revealed itself. The stone floors were worn into holes and fissures,

which spread in all directions like a cancer. The broken window panes

let blasts from every point of the compass play freely to and fro within

the draughty chambers. The hangings on the walls were ragged, smirched

with smoke and dust, fluttering in tatters. Not a piece remained of that

fine gallery of pictures which my grandfather had bequeathed as

heirlooms to the family. I only saw some portraits of my ancestors by

Titian and Tintoretto still staring from their ancient frames. I gazed

at them; they gazed at me; they wore a look of sadness and amazement, as

though inquiring how the wealth which they had gathered for their

offspring had been dissipated.

I have hitherto omitted to mention that our family archives contain an

old worm-eaten manuscript, in which are registered the tenths[128] paid

to the public treasury. From this document it appears that the father of

my great-grandfather was taxed on upwards of ten thousand ducats of

income. It is perhaps a folly to moralise on such things; yet the

recollection of those mournful portraits gazing down upon me in the

squalor of our ancient habitation prompts me to tell an idle truth.

Nobody will be the wiser for it; certainly none of our posterity in

this prodigal age. My grandfather left an only son and a good estate

settled in tail on heirs-male in perpetuity. Four excellent residences,

all of them well-furnished, one in Venice, another in Padua, another in

Pordenone, another in the Friulian country-town of Vicinate, were

included in this entail, as appears from his last will and testament.

Little did he think that the solemn appointments of the dead would be so

lightly binding on the living.

I had informed my friend Massimo of the exact state of our affairs at

home, so far as these were known to me. I could not acquaint him with

the grave disasters which had happened in my three years' absence, being

myself in blessed ignorance as yet. The news that my two elder sisters

had been married inclined me to expect that our domestic circumstances

were improving. Cruel deception wrapped me round, and a hundred

speechless but eloquent mouths were now proclaiming, from the walls and

chambers of my home, how utterly deceived I had been.

Before long I broke, as usual, into laughter, and gaily begged my

comrade's pardon for bringing him to such a wretched hostelry. I assured

him that my heart, at any rate, was not so ruined as my dwelling, and

engaged him in conversation, while we roamed around its chambers, every

nook of which increased my mirth by some new aspect of dilapidation.

Then I bade him refresh his spirits with a survey of the noble façade;

till at last we settled down as well as circumstances permitted. Two

days afterwards, my brother Gasparo arrived. I presented the stranger I

had brought to share our hospitality, frankly expressing my sense of his

worth and my obligations to him as a friend. Upon this we established

ourselves in a little society of three, enlivened by the conversation of

my brother, who, even with a fever on him, never failed to be witty.

Gasparo and I were anxiously awaiting an opportunity to talk alone like

brothers after my long absence. When the moment came, I inquired after

my poor father, our mother, and the circumstances of the family. What I

had already seen on my arrival prepared me for the disagreeable news I

had to hear. With his usual philosophy, but not without an occasional

sign of painful emotion, he gave me the following details. The family

was reduced to really tragic straits. Our father lived on, but

speechless and paralytic, in the same state as when I left him. My two

elder sisters, Marina and Giulia, were married respectively to the Conte

Michele di Prata and the Conte Giovan-Daniele di Montereale. About ten

thousand ducats had been promised for their dowries. To raise this sum,

such and such portions of the estate had been sold, and a debt of more

than two thousand ducats had been contracted. A lawsuit was pending

between the family and the Conte Montereale concerning part of the dowry

still due to him. Our other three sisters, Laura, Girolama, and Chiara,

were growing into womanhood, and gave much to think of for their future.

I saw, to my great annoyance, that it would be impossible to liquidate

my debt upon the spot. But all these terrifying details did not make me

regret my resignation of the post of cadet noble in the cavalry. A few

days later, Signor Massimo left for Padua, with the assurance that his

two hundred ducats would be paid in course of time by me. Upon this

matter he only expressed the sentiments of cordial friendship.

It was not too late in the season for a visit to the country. I felt a

strong desire to reach Friuli, and to kiss the hands of my unhappy

father. Thither then I went, together with my brother, armed with a

giant's fortitude, which was not long in being put to proof.

XVI.

_Fresh discoveries regarding the condition of our family.--Vain

hopes and wasted will to be of use.--I abandon myself to my old

literary studies._

Our country-house had been originally constructed on an old-fashioned,

roomy, and convenient scale, with numbers of out-buildings. It was now

reduced to one of those dilapidated farms, which I have described in my

burlesque poem _La Marfisa Bizzarra_, canto xii., stanza 126.[129]

Two-thirds of the edifice had been demolished, and the materials sold.

The remaining fragments were inhabited, but bore written on their front:

"Here once was Troy."

Prepared as I was by the misery of our town-house for the desolation of

this rural mansion, I hardly cared to cast a glance upon it. What I

noticed on arriving was a certain air of jollity and gladness, breathing

health, betokening contentment, which all the faces of the village

people wore. Amid the jubilations of relatives, guests, serving-folk and

lads about the farm, not omitting a pack of barking dogs, I descended

from the calèche with my brother. A whole crowd of people, whom I did

not know and could not number, fell upon my neck to bid me welcome.

Something of a military carriage, which I had picked up abroad, but

which had no relation to my real self, made our farm-folk stare upon me

like a comet.

Then I raised my eyes, and saw my poor father at a window in the upper

storey, with trembling limbs, dragging himself forward on his stick to

catch a glimpse of me. All the blood turned suddenly and galloped

through my veins. I rushed up the stairs, burst into the room where he

was standing, seized one of his hands, and kissed it in a transport of

filial affection. He fell upon my shoulder, more paralytic than he had

been when I last embraced him, and, in his inability to speak, broke

into a piteous fit of weeping. The effort I made to restrain my own

tears, lest they should add to his unhappiness, made me feel as though

my lungs would burst. Leaning on my arm, he slowly tottered after me,

and little by little we reached another room which he frequented.

October was nearly over, and the cold in that Friulian climate was very

sensible. A good fire burned on the hearth, near which stood the

arm-chair of my father, who for seven years had dragged his life out in

this wretched state. All the resources of medical science had been tried

in vain. Physicians sometimes agreed and sometimes differed about his

treatment. But their concord and their discord were equally impotent to

effect a cure; and he had not yet reached the age of fifty-five.

I found my mother in the same apartment. She uttered sentiments which

were not inappropriate to her maternal character, but in a frigid tone

and with an air of stately self-control. I always loved and respected

her, not merely from a sense of duty, but with a true filial instinct.

She, on her side, used frequently to protest when there was no need for

protestation, that she loved all her nine children with exactly the same

amount of affection. She often repeated the following words with

gravity, raising her eyebrows as she spoke: "Cut off one of my fingers

and I suffer pain; cut off a second and I suffer;" and so on through

nine fingers, amputated by the same figure of speech, with equal agony

in each case. Notwithstanding this, I believe that the loss of eight

fingers would not have given her the same pain as that of the first-born

finger, in other words, of my brother Gasparo. He is still alive, a man

of honour, and a sage if ever sage existed; and I feel sure that he

would admit the truth of this statement, if called on to confirm it.

In my long and anxious study of human nature, I have seen so many

mothers with the weakness of my own, that I never dreamed of blaming

her. It seemed right to me that my brother's mental gifts and noble

qualities should earn for him more of her love than she bestowed on all

her other eight children. Mothers, however, who are so devoted to a son

generally spoil him, notably by extolling what is good in his character,

but also by defending his natural frailties. Acting thus, my mother

favoured Gasparo's marriage, which subjected her beloved son to a real

martyrdom. Her lifelong devotion to him, and the prejudice displayed in

his favour by her will, only served to increase the unhappiness of a man

whom I always loved, loved still, and shall love as friend and brother

till the end of my days on earth. This digression was rendered necessary

by what will follow in my Memoirs.

The room was soon full of relatives and intimate friends, all curious

about me. My father strove to ply me with questions, but his tongue

refused its office, and he relapsed into weeping. Sad at heart as I was

for him, I contrived to relate the most amusing anecdotes I could

remember concerning my life in Dalmatia and my travels. In this way I

kept him laughing, together with the whole company, through the rest of

that day.

The perfect country air; a table abundantly served with rural dainties,

though somewhat deficient in elegance; the joviality, wit, and pleasant

sallies which never failed in our domestic circle,--all this prevented

me from attending to the defects of our establishment. Next day I began

to discover that the real cause of trouble was not in the building, but

in the minds of its inhabitants. I could not have explained why, but I

seemed to be a person of importance in the eyes of everybody. My three

sisters confided to me in secret that my brother Gasparo's wife, in

close alliance with my mother, who doted on her as the consort of her

favoured first-born, ruled all the affairs of the family, which were

rapidly going from bad to worse. My father's authority as head of the

house had ceased to be more than a mere instrument for carrying out what

my sister-in-law advised and my mother sanctioned. Unless I managed to

stem the tide of extravagance, we should all be plunged into an abyss of

ruin. One of my sisters, Girolama, a girl devoted to reading, writing,

and translating from the French--for she too was bitten with our family

cacoethes--spoke like a sibyl, gravely and eloquently, on these painful

topics. At the same time, my brother's wife contrived secret interviews,

in which she explained to me that her husband was indolent, torpid,

drowned in fruitless studies, devoted to the company of a certain clever

person, and wholly averse from thoughts or cares about domestic matters.

She had done everything in her power--God knew she had. She would go on

doing her best--God should see she would. Then she described her plans

and projects, which, to tell the truth, were pure poetical stupidities.

She vowed that she was not in any sense the mistress of the

establishment, the administrator of the estate, or the disposer of its

revenues; she merely gave advice, made suggestions, and exerted herself

for the common benefit and to supply the needs of the family in general.

She exhorted me to speak seriously to her husband; I was to make him

abandon his unprofitable studies, make him, above all things, give up

those visits of taste and soul, which did so much harm; in fine, I was

to force him to sustain his wife in her stupendous labours, and to

concentrate his thoughts upon his children, who were five in number.

When I came to analyse the curious compound of truths, lies, and fancies

which issued from the fevered brains of this poor lady--always hard at

work, always embarrassed in a labyrinth of business--I seemed to

perceive that what moved her most was the fear of being made herself

responsible for our financial failure. It was also clear that her

original ambition of acting the part of prime minister in a realm which

only existed in her own imagination, kept her always on the stretch;

while a certain little devil of feminine jealousy against her husband

added to her disquietude. He, good fellow, had forgotten the long

collection of Petrarchan poems written by him for her honour in the

past, and which she had repaid with the gift of five children. Not the

least little sonnet issued from his pen to celebrate her now. His lyrics

were addressed to another idol of the moment.

Meanwhile she set great store upon her personal importance. Every member

of our family, who wanted a ducat, a pair of shoes, or something of the

sort, came to her with humble supplications, imploring her good offices

at head-quarters--and Heaven knew where head-quarters were. This honour

and glory made up to her for all her heroic labours in the little

realm, which she administered with real authority, though her right to

do so was contested, and her schemes were pindarically unpractical.

My younger brother, Almorò,[130] was also at our villa, on a holiday

from school--the non-existent school he never went to. His education

seemed to have been of the slightest, and his wardrobe left even more to

be desired. A boy of good heart and parts, however; gay-spirited and

innocent; he was not old enough and had not time to reflect upon our

troubles; setting snares for little birds was all his pastime, and when

he talked to me, I heard only of the number and the kinds of birds he

caught, and the important adventures he had met with in his fowling

expeditions.

My father did not converse with me, because he could not; my mother,

because she would not. Gasparo's five children with their quarrels and

their games broke in upon the only solace which I had, that of reading

and writing.

To all the complaints I heard, to all the exhortations which were daily

heaped upon me, I gave one only answer: we will see and think it over.

One thing emerged with distinctness from this hurlyburly of our family.

If I attempted any salutary innovation in the wasp's nest of my

relatives, I should find no difficulty in gaining supporters to assist

me in my opposition to the government; but the government was in the

hands of women, under the shadow of my father's authority; I should

therefore be misrepresented to him, prejudiced as he was by education,

susceptible and hot-blooded by temperament, enfeebled by chronic

illness; and he was still the master, still my father, loved and

respected by me. I doubted whether anything which I could do would not

prove ineffectual or worse. I was afraid of becoming the object of

everybody's hatred; for I observed that personal considerations, rather

than wise reflection and moderate ambitions, were the motive principles

of all the folk I had to deal with. Finally I dreaded giving such a

shock to my father's declining frame as would cut short the few days of

life which still remained to him. The sequel will show that these

anticipations were not ill-founded.

In these circumstances I determined to exercise the strictest

self-control, and to bear with everything during my father's lifetime.

Literature and my favourite studies of the world meanwhile would suffice

to entertain me. Knowing that my uncle Almorò Cesare Tiepolo was in the

country on an estate of his not far from where we lived, I went to pay

him my respects. He inquired how I had been treated in Dalmatia by his

Excellency Quirini. I answered that he had treated me very well indeed,

but that he could not give me any permanent commission, because our

troops had been drafted into Italy. He then proposed to recommend me to

his Excellency the Provveditore Generale at Verona. I replied that I was

grateful for his interest on my behalf, but that Mars had not inspired

me with a vocation for military service. I foresaw that I should have to

employ all my energies upon the affairs of my family, which were calling

loudly for my assistance. Shaking his head and pursing up his lips, he

answered that what I said was only too true.

XVII.

_Return from Friuli to Venice with my family.--I pursue my chosen

path in life, and open new veins of experience.--Yet further

painful discoveries as to our circumstances.--The beginnings of

domestic discord._

The month of November was wearing away when our family began to think of

Venice. It amused me to watch the preparations for our journey and our

luggage, which in no wise resembled that of the General's suite I had

been used to. My father, an invalid; my mother, serious and

diplomatical; my sister-in-law, the woman of business; my brother

Gasparo, wool-gathering; our little sisters, intent upon the custody of

their old-fashioned bonnets; Almorò, plunged in grief at leaving his

birds and cages, which he consigned by something like a last will and

testament to the bailiff; I, giving myself military airs, quite out of

season; some serving-maids and men in worn-out livery; a few cats and

dogs; these composed our travelling party, which might have been

compared to a troupe of comedians upon the march.

I shall perhaps be told that there was no reason to enumerate these

humiliating circumstances. But I have never had to blush for unworthy

actions in my family; and it seems to me a poor philosophy that feels

ashamed where no shame is. Such as it was, our caravan arrived in

Venice, joking and laughing all the way. There we installed ourselves

with as much disorder and as little comfort as was proper to a fine

large mansion with nothing to fill its empty spaces.

For my own use I chose out a little room at the top of the house, where

I set up a rickety table, provided myself with a huge inkstand and

plenty of pens and paper, and spent at least six hours a day in reading

and scribbling poetic nonsense. This was my best amusement; but I ought

to add that I devoted some of my time to the cafés, studying types of

character and listening to conversation; nor did I neglect our theatres,

where I saw the various tragedies and comedies which appeared. My

brother Gasparo had already given several serious pieces to the stage.

They pleased the public then; and though they may be out of fashion

now, they would not fail to please me still. I know the instability of

taste too well to change my old opinions.

I had mixed with all sorts of men and learned to know their

characters--generals, admirals, noblemen, great lords, officers,

soldiers, the people of Illyrian cities, the Morlacchi of the villages,

Mainotti, Pastrovicchi, convicts, galley-slaves. It was time, I thought,

to become acquainted with my own Venetians. I began by cultivating a set

of men who go in Venice by the name of Cortigiani.[131] My companions of

this kind were chiefly shopkeepers and handicraftsmen, with a priest or

two among the number; clever fellows, respectable, and versed in all the

ways of our Venetian world. Their courage and readiness to take part in

quarrels won them the respect of the common people, and they carried the

art of getting the maximum of pleasure at a minimum of outlay to

perfection. On certain holidays I joined their boating-parties, and went

to shoot birds on the marshes with them. Or else we lunched together on

the Giudecca, at Campalto, Malcontenta, Murano, Burano, and other

neighbouring islands. My share of the expense on these occasions was

not much above sixpence, and I gained the hearty good-will of my

companions by contributing some slices of excellent Friulian ham to our

common table. The characters and manners of these men delighted me; I

took pleasure in listening to the stories of their quarrels,

reconciliations, love-adventures, misfortunes, accidents of all kinds,

told in racy Venetian dialect, with the liveliness which is natural to

our folk. What is more, I learned much from them. Alas! the race of

Cortigiani has degenerated, like everything else in this corrupt age.

When I chance to meet a survivor of the honest jolly crew, he strikes

his forehead, and confesses that the good days of his youth are

irrecoverable, and that the Cortigiano is an extinct species.

Meanwhile I took good care to interfere with nobody and nothing in the

household. This I did for my poor father's sake. But I kept my eyes open

to observe the intrigues, schemes, and movements of the government. Some

Jews, some brokers, and a crowd of women were always coming and going on

secret conferences with my sister-in-law. These attracted my attention,

and formed the subject of my earnest cogitations. It grieved me to see

my brother Gasparo immersed in his philosophy and poetry, never for one

moment giving the least thought to domestic economy. It grieved me; but

I grieved in silence. There was one circumstance, however, which fairly

put me out of patience. We had three sisters in the house; and a swarm

of drones, hulking young fellows of the freest manners, kept buzzing

round them. When I came home and found these visitors at their

accustomed chatter, I used to scowl at them, lift my hat and put it on

again, turn my back, and climb the stairs to my own den, with the fixed

intention of making the gentlemen perceive how little their company

attracted me. This manoeuvre had its effect. My sister-in-law took it

upon her to read me a matronly lecture on the impropriety of insulting

friends of the family by my rough ways. I replied that I knew very well

what friendship was, but that I could distinguish the false from the

true; I was not conscious of having been rude to anybody; my father was

the master, and if he did not mind some things which seemed to my

inexperience imprudent and irregular, a mere lad's opinions were not

worthy of consideration. This hint of my displeasure made all the women

of the house regard me like a serpent. Even my three sisters, who loved

me sincerely, and were excellent creatures, imbued with the soundest

religious principles, could not help harbouring a trifle of suspicion in

their feminine brains. For the rest, I said what I thought when I was

consulted upon affairs of no importance. My advice in such matters

pleased nobody. I ran on little errands if these were intrusted to me;

and above all, I devoted some hours of every evening to my father, who

always received me with tenderness and tears.

From conversation with my sisters I learned that the five thousand

ducats raised by sale of lands in Friuli, ostensibly to make up portions

for my married sisters, had either not been paid by the purchasers or

had only reached the hands of the husbands in part. The same had

happened with the drapery, linen, and jewels, for which a large debt had

been contracted with a company of merchants. These and similar

confidences made it clear to my mind that the marriages of my two

sisters had not been arranged for their settlement in life so much as

with the view of raising money under colourable pretexts, and of

alienating entailed property with some show of legality. In fact, I

scented disastrous dealings of the sort which are known at Venice by the

name of _stocchi_.[132] As natural consequences of this crooked policy,

urgent needs for ready money and embarrassments of all sorts had ensued,

which led to fresh expedients and ever-growing financial distress.

Without attributing malice to any one, I merely blamed the bad luck of

our family, owing to which my grandfather's fine estate had passed into

the hands of women under two administrations, and had been wasted by a

course of insane irregularities. I took care to send an accurate report

of our domestic circumstances to my brother Francesco at Corfu. And now

I must embark upon the sea of my worst troubles.

XVIII.

_I become, without fault of my own, quite unjustly, the object of

hatred to all members of my household.--Resolve to return to

Dalmatia.--My father's death._

It had not escaped my notice that my mother and sister-in-law were in

the habit of going abroad together in the mornings. During the five

winter months they wore masks, and their proceedings had all the

appearance of some secret business.[133] Now Carnival was over. We had

reached the month of March 1745, a date which will be always painful to

my recollection. Every morning the two ladies left the house together,

no longer masked, but wearing the _zendado_.[134] I asked my sisters if

they knew the object of these daily expeditions. They answered to the

following effect: all they knew for certain was that my father's invalid

condition made a residence in Venice irksome to him; now that the spring

was advancing, he wished to go into Friuli with my mother, leaving our

sister-in-law at the head of affairs in Venice; meanwhile the treasury

was empty, the barns and cellars of our country-house had nothing left

in them. I shrugged my shoulders, and kept silence.

A few days afterwards, while I was attempting to drive away care by

study in my little upper chamber, my three sisters entered. They were

weeping, and my first fear was lest my father should have died.

Reassuring me upon this point, they passionately besought me to

interpose between the family and shameful ruin. I alone was capable of

doing this. The secret expeditions of my mother and sister-in-law had

resulted in a contract with a certain Signor Francesco Zini, cloth

merchant. He undertook to pay down six hundred ducats in exchange for

our ancestral mansion, agreeing, moreover, to hand over a little

dwelling of his own in the distant quarter of San Jacopo dall' Orio.

They added that my father was ready to give his assent to this bargain,

and my brothers Gasparo and Almorò would offer no opposition. I felt

deeply moved by the distress of these poor girls as well as by my own

keen sense of humiliation; and when they concluded by enjoining the

strictest secrecy upon myself in the transaction, a gulf of dissensions,

disagreeableness, and misery of all kinds seemed to yawn before my feet.

Our pressing want of money, the contract verbally completed by my mother

and sister-in-law, my father's consent, the adhesion of my brothers to

the scheme, the obligation to secrecy laid upon me by my sisters, my own

bad reputation in the household as a disturber of domestic quiet, my

lack of friends and supporters in Venice, all filled me with terror. Yet

I resolved to try what I could do to gratify my father's desire for the

country, and to put a stop to this humiliating contract. With that

object in view I also undertook a secret mission and went to visit

Signor Francesco Zini.

I laid myself open to him in terms of flattering politeness, appealing

to his excellent disposition, and pointing out that he was about to

enter on a business which would expose him to risk and us to notable

humiliation. I told him that my father had been an invalid for many

years, that our ancestral mansion was subject to a strict entail, that

on my father's death he would lose his money and the house, that all

the sons of the family were not prepared to sanction the contract, that

one of them was in the Levant, that I had not the least intention of

assenting, and that the utmost I could do would be to abandon the house

at my father's express command. Then I passed to the pathetic. I

described a numerous family departing with their scanty bundles from the

loved paternal nest, bowed down with grief and shame before the eyes of

all their neighbours, who would be exclaiming: "See those gentlefolk

upon the move, because their home has been sold over their heads!" I

proved to him that if he gained a fine house to live in, he would also

gain an odious and ugly reputation. Finally, I besought him, as a man of

worth, to seize some plausible pretext for breaking a bargain which,

happily for his advantage and our own, had not been ratified.

Over the fat, red, small-pox-pitted features of Signor Zini spread

amazement and perplexity. He did not understand my rigmarole, he said;

he was an honest man, pouring out his blood, not water, to obtain the

house; my mother and sister-in-law, together with the broker of this

honourable bargain, had assured him that my father wished to conclude

it, and that all his sons were prepared to emancipate themselves from

the paternal authority, in order to be able to sign the contract, thus

giving it validity, and securing the rightful interest of the innocent

purchaser. The affair had been settled, the necessary deeds were

waiting on the bureau of Marchese Suarez, his advocate. Most assuredly,

unless my father's male heirs procured their emancipation, in order to

give validity to the contract in perpetuity, he would not unbutton his

pockets to disburse a penny; he was not a fool, to be imposed upon with

fibs and fables.

I commended the fat gentleman's perspicacity and caution; repeated that

I had no intention of procuring my emancipation, and that nothing on

earth would force me to consent; once more I begged him to find some

excuse for breaking off the bargain; and wound up by imploring him to

keep silence upon my interference in the matter. I made it clear that

only a brute, devoid of Christian charity, would reject a son's

entreaties, and render him odious to mother and father without any

advantage to himself. He promised to respect my secrecy, wagging his

huge scarlet jowl and lifting his night-cap, with so many protestations

of being touched to the heart, that I ought to have been put upon my

guard. I did not yet know human nature, and retired as happy as if I had

taken Gibraltar by assault, feeling confident that my prudence and

discretion had averted a lamentable catastrophe.

Nothing was said by me about the course which I had followed, even to my

three sisters. I reflected that they were women, and awaited a quiet

termination of the affair, trusting to Signor Zini's humanity.

Meanwhile I ruminated how to procure my father's removal to the country,

and how to help the family without waiting for the harvest, which would

be finished in three months. I computed the value of my clothes, my

watch, my snuff-box; prepared as I was then, to sell everything I

possessed. But these calculations only reduced me to despair. My one

real friend was Signor Massimo, then at Padua. I remembered that I

already owed him two hundred ducats, and that he was living on an

allowance from his father. Yet I knew that both father and son, as well

as a brother of my comrade, were no less generous toward persons on

whose character for loyalty and friendship they relied, than they were

suspicious of intriguers and impostors. I was also aware that they were

in a position to render me substantial services. How often, during the

tempestuous vicissitudes of my existence, have I not had the opportunity

to verify this fact!

While thus engaged in studying ways and means, Signor Zini broke rudely

in upon my meditations. Possessed with the desire to obtain our dwelling

for his own, he divulged the secret of my visit, and exposed what I had

said to him in terms of his own choosing. My belief is that his

communication amounted to this:--unless the hot-headed impetuous young

fellow, who had come to treat with him, were brought to reason, and

compelled to sign the contract, he refused to disburse two shillings.

I was in my upper chamber, studying as usual, and talking with my

brother Almorò about his wretched schooling, when my mother appeared one

day. Something of philosophical severity in her toilette, something

imposing in her manner, which concealed, however, an internal

irritation, proclaimed the gravity of her mission. She addressed herself

pointedly to me, with the features of a judge rather than a mother, and

began a long narration of the straits to which we were reduced. She said

that, God be blessed, she had been inspired and assisted to discover six

hundred ducats in the hands of a benevolent merchant, which would be

placed immediately at her disposal upon such and such conditions. The

notary was ready to engross the necessary deeds; and she begged me to

declare what I thought about this special providence.

At the bottom of her heart I read Signor Zini's act of treason, and saw

that I was lost. However, I answered respectfully that a contract of

this kind struck me as anything but providential; still my father had

full power to do what he thought fit, without rendering an account of

his actions to his sons. She flamed up, and cried with a threatening air

that my consent was also needed; she could not believe that I should be

so rash and headstrong as to prevent a plan which would relieve my

father and the family in our present painful circumstances. I could have

uttered several truths without a wish to wound; but certain truths,

once spoken, wound incurably. Therefore, I contented myself with

observing that I was ready to shed my blood for my father, but that I

could not assent to a contract so humiliating and ruinous, the last of a

whole series dictated by suicidal policy. People who understood economy

were in the habit of calculating and making provision for the future,

not of selling or mortgaging their property to meet embarrassments

created by their own extravagance. The latter course was rapidly

bringing our whole family to the workhouse. Under a disastrous financial

system our income had been reduced to three thousand ducats; yet I could

not comprehend how we were in such straits as she had described. When

people were unable to maintain a decent state in the capital, they could

live at ease in the country at one-third of the same cost. Houses ought

to be let, and not sold. Still my father had the power to make any

contract he thought right; only I did not believe him capable of forcing

me to give consent against my will and judgment.

The gestures of submission, respect, and supplication with which I

accompanied this speech had no power to mollify the pungency of its

significance. My mother rose, with her arms akimbo, and inquired who it

was I meant to blame for our misfortunes. Instead of telling the bitter

and irrefutable truth, I said that I only blamed fate and the

misfortunes themselves. "I reckon," she replied with a smile of fury,

"that you will give in your adhesion." "Indeed I shall not," was my

answer; and the profound bow with which I spoke these words had the

appearance of impertinent irony, although God knows I did not mean it.

This was enough to fan the smothered flames into a Vesuvius in eruption.

My mother bent her stormy brows upon me--upon the sixth finger of her

maternal hands--and broke into the following declamation. "From the

moment of my return she had prophesied, like Cassandra, that I should

turn the household upside down. She did not know me for one of her own

children. The intimacy of a certain friend to whom I had attached myself

was ruining the family, as it had ruined me. (Poor innocent generous

Signor Massimo!) If I had behaved well during my three years' service,

his Excellency Quirini would certainly have rewarded me with some good

military situation. As it was, my excursion into Dalmatia had been a

source of burdensome expense. I had led a vicious life there ... she

knew ... she did not mean to speak ... but ... enough ... and my debt of

two hundred ducats to Massimo was merely a sum lost by me at basset."

Now this debt had not yet been paid, and had therefore been of no

inconvenience to my family. Such extravagant accusations took me by

surprise; and the reader will now perceive the reason of the accounts

which I rendered in a former passage of these Memoirs. I should perhaps

have flown into a fury alien to my real nature, if these reproofs had

been based on truth. The wounding allusion to Signor Massimo nearly

roused me, but I preserved my self-control. It was clear that my mother

had been deeply prejudiced and cruelly instigated against me. The

consciousness of my innocence and a sense of duty made me stand before

her rigid and mute as a statue. With an impulse of affection, maternal

as it seemed, my mother took my brother Almorò by the arm, and gazing at

me with contempt, which strove to be compassionate, she addressed these

words to him: "Come away, my dear boy; let us leave that madman to the

error of his ways!" Then she turned her back and led him from the room,

as though she were saving an innocent creature from some fearful danger.

Convinced by this tragi-comedy that I was the victim of a family cabal,

I saw no other course open but to resume my commission as a cadet of

cavalry. I left my room, went downstairs, and found all the family

(except my father) assembled in commotion, listening to the

commiserations of their usual friends enraged against me. It had been

proclaimed aloud that I had called them all thieves, retorted against my

mother with scandalous and impious audacity, and betrayed my

determination to make myself the tyrant of the household. Even my three

sisters, who had urged me into opposition, showed themselves sulkily

scornful; and though I might have exposed them before the whole

company, I did not deign to do so. Confirmed in my resolve to leave

Venice for Dalmatia, I buckled on my sword, wasted no words about my

intention, and repaired to the Riva dei Schiavoni, to see if I could

find a ship for Zara. There I discovered that a _trabacolo_ would set

sail in four or five days. The captain was a certain Bernetich. I took

down his name, and, wrapped up in my own dark thoughts, spent all that

day in exile, wandering far from home.

On my return, I noticed that, though everybody wore a crabbed face

against me, something had happened to their satisfaction. Signor Zini,

it appeared, was willing to execute the contract without requiring my

consent. I did not know that my brother Francesco had left a power of

attorney to act for him in Gasparo's hands. With voices of triumph they

all exclaimed together that the great sacrifice was to be solemnly and

legally performed next day. I did not care to inquire how things had

been brought to this conclusion; but putting on as cheerful a face as

possible, I went to keep my poor father company as usual for a few hours

in the evening.

It will be as well at this point to describe the topography of our

house. It was originally built for two separate residences, with double

entrances upon the street and water-side, two staircases and two

cisterns. At the time when it was planned, the Gozzis formed two

families, which were afterwards reduced to one. We occupied the lower

floor and some apartments in the highest storey. The second floor was

let for 150 ducats a year to an honest iron-monger called Uccelli; but

this portion of the mansion had also been sold upon my father's life, by

one of those contracts which were only too frequent in our family, for

the sum of 1200 ducats to his Excellency the Procuratore Sagredo.

I did all in my power to avoid the least allusion to the painful scenes

of the preceding day; but my dear father kept gazing earnestly at me,

and shedding tears from time to time. In vain I tried to inspire him

with happier thoughts. Would that I could banish all recollection of

that night, which was one of the most sombre, the most painful, in the

whole course of my existence. Paralysed and dumb for seven long years,

he yet retained his mental faculties in their full vigour. Summoning all

his force, by signs and stammerings and tears, he made it only too clear

how much he suffered from the miserable straits to which the family had

been reduced. He also continued to express his sympathy with me for my

dislike to sign the projected contract. To my surprise and grief, he

intimated that I had only a brief time to wait; his swift approaching

death would restore to us the upper dwelling, which had been sold upon

his life, and which was much better than the one we occupied. This

inarticulate but eloquent discourse ended in a flood of tears. Deeply

moved to the bottom of my heart, I strove to tranquillise his mind, and

direct his thoughts from such afflicting topics. I perceived that no

pains had been spared to make me odious in my father's eyes, and that

this had been done without the least regard for his infirmity. Yet I did

not attempt to justify my conduct, and said nothing about my firm

resolve to leave home. His departure for Friuli had been fixed on the

third day after this fatal evening, and I mentally decided to set out

for Dalmatia two days later on. My assumed cheerfulness, and the merry

turn I gave to all those dismal subjects of reflection, seemed to

tranquillise him. Then he tried to lift himself from his arm-chair, as

though to get to bed. I helped to raise him, but he tottered more than

usual, and sank with his knees toward the ground. I took him in my arms

to keep him from falling. Agonising moment! It was clear that a last

stroke of apoplexy was carrying away my father from my arms. In a loud

voice and with perfect articulation he pronounced the words: "I am

dying!" They fell like lead upon my heart, with such cruel force that I

nearly dropped. My mother, who was present, fled from the room. I called

aloud for aid. Servants hurried in; one of these I dispatched for

medical assistance, while the others helped me to place my poor dear

father, now quite incapable of any movement, on his bed. A physician,

Doctor Bonariva by name, had him bled at once. But nothing could be done

to save his life. Assisted by Don Pietro Pighetti, now Canon of S.

Marco, in the last religious duties of our creed, he displayed all the

signs of Christian resignation and intelligence; and after eight hours

of oppression, toilsome suffering, and the pangs of death, my unhappy

parent closed his eyes upon the vast obscurity in which his family was

plunged.

XIX.

_My attempts at pacification defeated.--Useless philosophical

reflections.--A terrible domestic storm begins to brew._

No sooner had my father breathed his last than my lady sister-in-law,

all activity and bustle, issued from the room of mourning, and took upon

her to console his sorrowing children with the convincing statement that

he was the most lovely corpse which eyes of men had ever seen. This

wholly unexpected statement, which had nothing of humanity, morality, or

philosophy in it, and which she kept repeating and affirming upon oath

for our relief, filled me then, and fills me now, with such fury, that I

should be angry to think that any of my readers could laugh at it.

One disastrous thought kept breaking in upon our sorrow at this tragic

moment. Am I to record it? We had neither the wherewithal to provide a

decent interment for my father, nor the credit to obtain it. The

habitués of the house gave words in abundance, but no pecuniary aid. I

had only one friend, Massimo, my creditor, the object of my relatives'

calumnies. Grief inspired me with the thought of writing to lay our

difficulties before his generous mind. The special messenger by whom I

sent this letter returned with a sum of money more than sufficient to

defray the expenses of a becoming funeral. On receiving it, I took my

brother Gasparo apart, placed the money in his hands, and told him who

had given it. Then I begged him not to misinterpret what I was about to

say. He was my elder, and I willingly acknowledged him to be the head of

our family. He could not be blind to the deplorable condition into which

we had declined. Duty required that he should take the reins with manly

resolution, and should withdraw the management of our affairs from the

hands of those who had brought us to utter shipwreck. My brother

accepted the money and my speech as well as might have been expected

from a man of his excellent disposition and superior intelligence. He

admitted that he saw the necessity of a thorough economical reform,

carried through with virile firmness. Some increase of income, owing to

the expiration of contracts made upon my father's life, would facilitate

the undertaking. He was willing to relinquish literary occupations,

which were neither appreciated nor remunerated in Italy, for the sake

of being able to devote his energy and time to the administration of our

common property.

I did not flatter myself that anything so much to be desired would come

to pass. I knew how impossible it is for people to change their

character and nature. I knew his wife's meddlesome, restless, imperious

thirst for ruling--his own peaceable temperament, averse from

opposition, addicted to the habits of a student. Yet I saw the necessity

of taking the step I did, if only to correct the bad impression of

myself, which had grown up under malevolent influences in the family.

I had no heart to follow my father to the grave, but shut myself up in

my little chamber, where I gave way through three days and three nights

to grief, not unmingled with remorse for having innocently helped to

hasten his death. Nothing less than this tragedy was needed to cancel

Signor Francesco Zini's contract.

I feel some repugnance at sitting down to write what happened at this

epoch in my family. I wish that I could tell the tale without appearing

to censure any of my relatives and without seeming to draw a

vain-glorious picture of myself. The truth at any cost has to be

reported; but I protest with emphasis, and this is also true, that I

always experienced real pain when I beheld the disastrous consequences

which the faults of others brought upon themselves, and that I neither

took pleasure in revenge, nor cherished sentiments of ambition in doing

good to my family--if indeed I did do good. The reader will be able to

judge of that from the sequel of these Memoirs.

When a group of closely related persons in one household fall to

quarrelling, all the causes which perpetuate faults of character and

conduct begin to operate. Each member of the company is perfectly

acquainted with the weak side of his neighbour, and knows exactly how to

sting him to the quick. Exacerbated tempers and prejudiced minds judge

everything awry, while partisans and flatterers add fuel to the fire.

Zeal is misconstrued into craft and tyranny; no protestations and no

arguments suffice to remove such false impressions. The torment of the

hell in which one has to live blinds reason and enslaves the freedom of

volition; years of unhappiness pass by before the weapons of vindictive

rage are blunted by constant acts of toleration and disinterested deeds

of kindness, and the innocent are seen in their true light. To blame the

doings of a family divided against itself is much the same as blaming

the actions of somnambulists.

We had never used the outward demonstrations of affection, kisses and

caresses, in our domestic circle. Yet we were bound together by real

sentiments of friendliness and love on all sides. Unluckily the seeds of

discord had already begun to germinate in our brains. Besides my mother,

three brothers and three sisters, my sister-in-law was there, with her

hot, headstrong, vindictive temperament, her aptitude for colouring

everything to suit her own purpose, and her established dominion over

the minds of my relations. During my father's long illness there had

been no real head in the household. Everybody passed for master. No one

learned the virtues of submission and filial obedience. Each member of

the family had his own engagements, his own separate obligations,

together with the passions proper to himself as a human being. There was

no defect of intelligence or mental energy. But lacking a central

authority which might have brought man's egotistic passions into

wholesome subjection, self-love and caprice turned the individuals of

the group into so many political agents, bent on achieving their own

ends, without regard for the common interest. I must not omit the

chronic malady under which we suffered--that predilection for poetry,

which tinged all we thought and planned with romanticism. During a

period of many years no records had been kept either of the income

derived from our estate, or of the sales which had been made. With

perfect justice each in turn denied that he had directed our affairs. In

such circumstances the death of the father leaves a family exposed to

direst intestine warfare; and I should be both indiscreet and inhuman if

I were to lay the whole blame of what ensued upon any of the six

relatives whom I have mentioned.

A young man like myself, of little more than twenty years, prone to

thinking rather than to speaking, with a military air acquired abroad,

when he found himself in the middle of so many working brains, and

attempted to effect a total revolution, could not but raise

irascibilities of all sorts and expose himself to odious suspicions. The

portrait which I mean to paint of my own physical and other qualities

will perhaps reveal defects which rendered such suspicions, unjust as

they are, at any rate excusable.

My mother was not so overwhelmed by the recent loss of her husband as to

be unable to think of business. She demanded the repayment of her dowry,

small as it was, like one who feels the coming shipwreck and seeks a

skiff for his salvation. My sister-in-law, bent as usual on displaying

her talent for affairs, called the brokers, Jews, and female go-betweens

around her. My sisters were always conferring in secret among

themselves, or with my sister-in-law, who kept promising them husbands

and marriage-portions. My brother Gasparo, at the very moment when he

solemnly promised to assume the reins of government, handed over the

money I had got from Padua to his wife, to do as she thought best with,

reserving only a few coins for his own purse. Then he relapsed into his

ordinary ways of life, his literary studies, his society of wit and

genius, and gave no signs of any firm intention to make himself the

master.

About twenty days had passed since my father died, when I was summoned

to a serious conference with my elder brother, my mother, and my

sister-in-law. We seated ourselves upon four straw-bottomed rickety

chairs, and my sister-in-law, with an air betokening the gravity of the

occasion, moved the following resolution. Signor Massimo ought to be

repaid (this, mark well, was meant to gain me over). With a view to

discharging the debts we owed him, and for other urgent necessities, it

would be advisable to sell the upper dwelling in our town-house for the

sum of 1200 ducats on the lives of us four brothers. A purchaser was

ready (possibly Signor Francesco Zini). The capital left over would

enable us to put our affairs in order, and to go forward swimmingly upon

a new and proper method of administration. My mother blinked approval of

this fine idea. My brother declared that it was the only course left

open to us. They all looked at me and waited for my assent. I did not

comprehend by what right my mother and sister-in-law took part in the

conference, or how my brother was not ashamed of cutting the figure he

did there, and of following his wife's suggestions with such docility. A

hell of squabbling yawned before me, and I answered as coldly as I could

that, so far as Signor Massimo was concerned, I could trust his generous

indulgence towards a friend in difficulties, and that I did not approve

of selling property upon our joint lives. Such a step seemed to me mere

progress on the former road to ruin. I should prefer to let our mansion,

removing the whole family to the country, where we could live for

one-third of the expense, until our debts were paid and the estate was

nursed into comparative prosperity.

This scandalous ultimatum, which wounded the inclinations and the

self-interest of every member in the family, won me the reputation of a

very Dionysius of Syracuse. Day by day, in secret conclaves, the storm

against me grew and gathered strength. My brother Francesco, however,

had written from Corfu that he was coming home, and I judged it prudent

to await his arrival. Until I gained his support, I stood alone, hated

and dreaded like a fatal comet by my kindred. To distract my mind from

painful thoughts, I summoned all my mental forces, and poured forth

torrents of verse and prose and bizarre fancies upon paper. All through

my long and troubled life I have drawn relief from two main sources. One

is my own robust and democratic[135] bent of mind. The other is my

aptitude for studying human nature and for writing. I may truly say

that the exercise of fancy and the art of composition have been to my

mental pains what opiates are to physical torments.

XX.

_We plunge from bad to worse, deeper and deeper into the mire._

When my brother Francesco arrived from the Levant, I explained to him

the state of our affairs, and my own wishes with regard to their

administration. We both decided that he should repair to Friuli, and

undertake the management of our estates there. Gasparo was to remain

titular head of the family, while Francesco received rents, kept strict

accounts, and provided for the common household. Meanwhile we begged our

mother to charge herself with certain domestic duties, and our

sister-in-law with certain others, hoping by this apportionment of

officers to introduce harmony and order into the establishment. My

sister-in-law displayed a really exemplary resignation, merely

expressing her desire that, at this juncture, the account-book of

expenditure which she had kept for some years past should be signed by

her husband and his three brothers, in token of approval and in

discharge to her of all pecuniary obligations.

I strove to make her understand that there was no need for such a

receipt in form; nobody would dream of calling her to account, and we

were all very grateful for her services. She would not listen to my

arguments, but insisted on our signing a certain notebook scrawled with

cabalistic characters and numbers. Francesco observed that we might

safely sign, for the sake of peace and quiet. Having entered our family

without a farthing, accompanied by her father and mother, whom we had

supported for many years and buried at our own charges, she was

incapable of making claims on the estate. To this he added that he had

consulted lawyers, and that he was quite convinced of the propriety of

yielding to her wishes.

The sequel of this history will show that his reasoning, though

plausible enough, was faulty, and that the policy he recommended led to

further complications. Gasparo and Almorò had already signed; Francesco

was prepared to follow suit; I did not care to take the odium of

standing out alone. Accordingly, four signatures were generously

appended to the mass of undecipherable hieroglyphics, without any

attempt on our part to examine the accounts, which by this act we

formally accepted.

Francesco set off for Friuli, after promising to maintain a detailed

correspondence with Gasparo on the state and management of our farms

there, and not to let himself be wheedled out of money or produce at the

demand of every one and anybody. I did not then know what a worthless

coadjutor I had summoned to support my policy. Without the least

intention to defraud, he was governed by an insect's blind instinct for

his own particular advantage. Under a compliant exterior, he concealed

the subtlety of a diplomatist. His sole aim was to temporise and make

concessions, with the view of bringing matters to a rupture and of

obtaining his own share in the division of our common patrimony. This

end he pursued in secrecy and silence, without reflecting on his duties

to the family, or the position of our three unmarried sisters, and the

discords which his pursuit of self-interest was bound to foment.

What followed after his departure for Friuli seemed conclusively to

prove that a plan had been laid to drive him to the Levant and me to

Dalmatia by involving us in embarrassments of all sorts. I accuse

nobody; the heated passions which raged round us, and the injuries from

which I suffered, deserve compassion more than blame.

Scarcely a day passed without letters being sent from Venice, begging my

brother to dispatch provisions or money on various pretences. He

complied with every application, whether it bore the name of Gasparo or

of my mother or my sister-in-law. In the course of some seven months he

had exhausted the whole harvest of that year, without asking for

accounts or disputing the claims made upon the property he managed. In

like manner the profits of certain houses in Venice, and of some farms

at Bergamo and Vicenza, amounting to 800 ducats, had been dissipated.

When letters still kept coming, demanding supplies and setting forth our

urgent needs, my brother could only answer that there was nothing left

to send. It was vain to inquire how the casks of wine and sacks of corn

and bags of cash had vanished. Everybody had taken something to defray

his own particular expenses. One said, "I got only so much;" another, "I

got so much; I did this, and I did that." Gasparo knew less than anybody

how matters had been managed, and had kept no account of the least

article. The conclusion arrived at was that we must all die of hunger

unless we sold some piece of the estate upon our joint lives.

"Ora incomencian le dolenti note."

"And now begins the Iliad of our woes."

XXI.

_My attitude of patient calm is useless.--Volcanic eruptions,

machinations, tragi-comic civil wars within our household._

At this point I resolved to step forth boldly and to take the whole

weight of our affairs upon my shoulders, without troubling my head about

being called a tyrant and disturber of domestic peace. I proclaimed

aloud that the family must retire for some time into the country and

economise. Nothing would induce me to consent to sales or mortgages.

Then I began to contract debts on my own account, and to part with my

personal trifles for the support of the household. I soon saw that it

was impossible in this way to keep fifteen people, servants included, at

Venice. Whenever I insisted upon the necessity of leaving for the

country, all the women rose in revolt, and turned their backs without a

word of answer. Our dining-table became the scene of daily quarrels,

sullen faces, surly glances, biting speeches. I was deeply grieved to

observe that a final division of the estate was drawing nearer and

nearer. To avert this catastrophe seemed impracticable, and I reflected

gloomily upon the condition to which my brother Gasparo would be

reduced, with a wife and five children to support upon the fourth part

of our encumbered property. Meanwhile I could not blame him except for

his incurable indolence and absolute immersion in studies for which I

shared his weakness.

Among the habitués of the house, none of them friends of mine, were

certain lawyers. I noticed that these gentlemen had frequent conferences

with the ladies of the family who ruled my brother. They were clearly

plotting against me, and seeking means to set the machinery of the law

in movement in order to hamper my free action. There was also a lady to

whom the female members of my family paid visits every evening. She was

the Countess Elisabetta Ghellini of Vicenza, widow of the patrician

Barbarigo Balbi, who died some years before this epoch, leaving her the

mother of an only son. It is exceedingly rare to find a lady endowed

with the excellent qualities of heart and head which she possessed in a

supreme degree. About forty years of age, infirm of health, and exposed

to constant litigation through various claims advanced against her

moderate estates, she bore the trials of life with steady courage and

constant trust in Heaven. Her chief interest was the education of her

son, a boy of eight or nine, for whom she had provided masters, while

she herself instilled into his mind the principles of sound religion and

morality. Gifted with a lively intellect, and fond of literature, she

spent a large part of the day in reading poetry, and opened her house to

a society composed mainly of persons who had suffered in the battles of

life. Her extreme sympathy for the afflicted led her to despoil herself

with admirable intrepidity, and to bestow on others what was needed for

her own support. This compassionate and pious lady had for her adviser

and advocate in the numerous lawsuits to which she was condemned, the

celebrated Conte Francesco Santorini.

It will appear from the sequel that this digression upon the Countess

Ghellini was needed to explain an important passage in my life. Amid the

din and squabbles of our home, I used at times to catch fragments of

the panegyrics poured forth by my female relatives and Gasparo upon this

lady, and heard them rehearse the sonnets which they intended to recite

in her honour, or to offer for her recreation. Such was the common

custom at that period, observed by poets in the houses they frequented.

I speedily divined that a plot was in process of formation to secure the

assistance of a very famous advocate against me. Trusting this

intuition, I resolved to introduce myself, although I had received no

invitation, to the lady whom my enemies so warmly praised.

She received me, and asked who I might be. On giving my name, the noble

and yet kindly distance of her manner changed suddenly to sternness. A

few phrases which I thought it right to utter about her interest in my

relatives increased this expression of reserve; and she began to speak

as follows, with the happy choice of words which was peculiar to her:

"Sir, I am a poor woman as regards the wealth of this life, but by the

grace of God I am rich in the possession of good sentiments and a sound

education. Your family is cultivated, and deserves to meet with kindly

feeling and esteem from all the world. It is a pity that such a family

should be annoyed and brought to sorrow by a certain individual bound to

it by ties of blood, duty, and respect. A mother of very noble birth

treated with contempt, sisters domineered over, persons of merit

regarded with hatred--all kinds of extravagances and injustice--such

things dishonour the individual of whom I speak." This preamble made me

feel inclined to bow myself out of the room in silence, since I am by

nature far from prone to justify my innocence; but politeness and a fear

that a certain famous advocate, if prejudiced against me, might upset my

plans, kept me where I was. I suffered, however, keenly from the

barbarous picture which had been presented to me, and began to plead in

self-defence. She interrupted me by saying that she did not believe me

to be entirely bad-hearted, and that if I ceased to follow the counsels

of a certain friend of mine, I might become a rational and right-feeling

young man. So then, here was Signor Massimo once more made a

scape-goat--the friend who had assisted me in Dalmatia, succoured my

family in our distress, and who still remained our uncomplaining

creditor. The impropriety of this attack stung me so sharply that I

could not hold my tongue. I had been treated as a knave and fool without

losing patience; but never in my life have I heard my friends insulted

without resenting the injustice.

I told the lady, knitting my brows and speaking seriously, that she was

bound to listen to me: unless, as I thought not, she was indifferent to

equity. Prejudice, I said, is a very unjust judge, and I did not wish

her to fall into that category. Then I entered into a candid narration

of our family affairs. I described the ill results of reckless

mal-administration. I related what had already happened and was sure to

happen, what I wanted, how I was opposed, my honourable intentions, the

plots and schemes to thwart me, the services rendered by my friend and

his guiltlessness of any machinations. I could see that she was both

surprised and penetrated by my reasoning. Just at this point Conte

Francesco Santorini entered the apartment, tired and drowsy. We

exchanged greetings, and the lady spoke to him in this way: "Count, you

were quite right to doubt about the Gozzi. This gentleman has put a very

different face upon the matter, and I know not what to think." The Count

sank sleepily into a chair, murmuring: "Did I not tell you that you

ought to hear both sides? The chatter of women, heated brains" ... And

having said these words, he subsided into slumber.

I begged this noble lady to continue her protection to our family, and

to receive the visits which I hoped to pay her; if she sought to help

us, she could do so by allaying the fever which was burning in so many

irritated bosoms. For my part, I cultivated her friendship through many

long years, until death forced me to deplore the loss of one whom I

esteemed and reverenced. My relatives, on the other hand, gradually

relaxed in their attentions, ceased to visit her, and changed their

eulogistic sonnets into petty satires.

XXII.

_The dogs of the law are let loose on me by my family.--It is

impossible to avoid a separation._

As time went on, my steady intention to remove our family into the

country, and my other plans of reform, roused my domestic antagonists to

various pettifogging stratagems. The black-robed seedy myrmidons of the

courts began to haunt our dwelling, taking inventories of every nail on

the pretext of my mother's dowry, delivering demands in form from my

three sisters for maintenance and marriage portions, presenting bills

for drapery and jewels furnished by a company of merchants to the tune

of 1500 ducats, and suing on the part of my two brothers-in-law for some

4000 ducats owed to them. Little creditors of all descriptions rose in

swarms around us; and what was still more astounding, my sister-in-law

advanced a claim of 900 ducats, due to her, she said, upon the statement

of accounts which we had signed so negligently. One would have thought

the myrmidons and ban-dogs of the law had been unleashed by hunters bent

on driving a wild beast from his lair; while the satisfaction and

triumph depicted on the faces of my relatives showed too clearly who

were the real authors of this legal persecution.

I bore the brunt of these attacks with my habitual philosophy of

laughter, drew closer to my brother Almorò, and informed Francesco by

letter of what was being conspired against us. Count Francesco Santorini

helped me at this pinch with excellent advice. Under his direction I

took the following measures. Francesco received instructions to hold

fast by every rood of our Friulian property, and to send me copies of

any writs which might be served upon him there. I recognised my mother's

dowry, and offered annual payments to the merchants and my

brothers-in-law. To my sisters I replied in writing that their

maintenance should be duly attended to, but that it was impossible to

create marriage portions for them under the conditions of entail to

which the estate was subjected. With regard to the monstrous claims

advanced by my sister-in-law, I flatly denied their validity until they

had been submitted to a court of justice. Then I proceeded to meet the

current expenditure of our establishment as well as I was able, while

waiting for the time of harvest; and all this I did without mooting the

question of Gasparo's separation from our brotherhood, in the hope that

little by little things would settle down in peace and quietness. Vain

and idle expectation! My reforms, by cutting at the root of vested

interests, and checking the arbitrary sway of Heaven knows whom, merely

fanned the flames of rage which burned against me. In a private

memorial, addressed to my mother, brother, sister-in-law, and sisters,

I finally explained the impossibility of supporting the family any

longer at Venice, exposed as I was to annoying and expensive litigation

with the very persons who ate and drank at the same table. I might just

as well have talked to images. Writs issued by my mother, my

sister-in-law, my sisters, fell in showers. Slights and insults

thickened daily. Our common table had become a pit of hell, worthy to be

sung by Dante. To such a state of misery had irrational dissensions

brought a set of relatives who really loved each other.

In order to shelter Almorò and myself from the wordy missiles which fell

like hail all dinner-time, I had a little table laid for us two in a

separate apartment. The covers were removed with rudeness, on the

pretext that the linen, plates, dishes, &c., belonged to my mother's

dowry, and that if I wanted such furniture I must buy it. Pushed in this

way to extremities, I decided to leave a house which had become for me a

hell on earth. Perhaps it was impolitic to take this step. But I could

not stand these petty persecutions longer. Before quitting the infernal

regions, I begged permission from my mother to take away the beds in

which my brother Almorò and I enjoyed our troubled slumbers, offering to

pay their price to the credit of her dowry. She replied with a sardonic

smile of discontent that she could not grant my request, since the beds

were needed by the family. I accepted this refusal with hilarity.

"E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle."

"And thence we issued to review the stars."

XXIII.

_Calumnious reports, negotiations, a legal partition of our family

estate, tranquillity sought in vain._

I had hardly settled down with my brother Almorò in the remote quarter

of S. Caterina, where lodgings are cheap in proportion to their

inconvenience and discomfort, before the whole town began to talk about

our doings. Three of the brothers Gozzi, it was rumoured, had laid

violent hands upon the family estate; their eldest brother with his wife

and five children, their three unmarried sisters, and their mother, a

Venetian noblewoman worthy of all respect, had been plunged in tears and

indigence by the barbarous inhumanity of these unnatural monsters. The

hovel I had hired, and where I suffocated with Almorò in the smoke of a

miserable kitchen, ill-furnished and waited on by an old beldame called

Jacopa, was besieged by the myrmidons of the law. Everything was done to

dislodge me from the city, and to make me abandon the line of action on

which I had resolved. Democritus and my innocence came to my aid; and I

determined to stand firm with silent and passive resistance.

In these painful circumstances I heard to my great sorrow that my

brother's wife had persuaded him to become the lessee of the theatre of

S. Angelo at Venice.[136] Her romantic turn of fancy, together with her

love of domination, made her conceive wild hopes of profit from this

scheme. A company of actors were engaged at fixed salaries; and she was

to play the part of controller, purse-holder, and stage-manager for the

troupe at Venice and on the mainland. Moved by pity for my brother and

his innocent children, I did everything I could, without appearing

personally in the matter, to dissuade this hot-headed woman from so

perilous an enterprise. She repelled all such attempts with scorn, being

firmly convinced that she would gain a fortune and make her

brothers-in-law bite their nails with envy.

I saw that the division of our patrimony could no longer be postponed,

and civilly intimated to Gasparo that the time was come for taking this

supreme step. Articles were accordingly drawn up, whereby the several

parcels of our estate in Friuli, Venice, Bergamo, and Vicenza were

partitioned into four lots. Provision was made for the repayment of my

mother's dowry and for the proper maintenance of my three sisters, all

of whom elected to reside with Gasparo. A fund was formed for the

liquidation of debts, the charge of which devolved on me. I undertook to

render an annual report of this operation, showing how I had bestowed

the monies in my hands as trustee for the family. Nothing was fixed

about my sister-in-law's claims for reimbursement; but it will be seen

that when her theatrical speculation proved a ruinous failure, I had to

take these also into account. Gasparo expressed a wish to obtain the

upper dwelling in our mansion as part of his share. The lower dwelling

was conceded to Francesco, Almorò and myself. To my mother and sisters

we offered the hospitality of sons and brothers, in case at any time

they should repent of their decision to abide with Gasparo.

It might be imagined that, while these negotiations were in progress, I

had no time to spend on literary occupations. Nothing could be further

from the fact. I found in them my solace and distraction, pouring forth

multitudes of compositions, for the most part humorous and alien to the

cares which weighed upon my mind. The course of my Memoirs will bring to

light many curious incidents which these literary pastimes occasioned,

and the narration of which will prove, I hope, far from saddening to my

readers.

XXIV.

_I enter on a period of toilsome litigation, and become acquainted

with Venetian lawyers._

I should have been an arrant fool had I flattered myself with the hope

that this partition would introduce the olive-branch of peace into our

midst. On the contrary, I looked forward, and with justice, to all kinds

of coming troubles. Two-thirds of the estate were saved from extravagant

administration by the process; but the minds of Gasparo's family had

been almost incurably embittered by the same cause. When I wanted to lay

my hands upon our documents, in order to study the nature of various

entails and trusts under which the estates were settled, I found that

all these papers had been sold out of spite. Who had done this I did not

learn, but I was informed in great secrecy by a servant-maid that they

had been sold to a certain pork-butcher. I repaired immediately to his

shop, and was only just in time to repurchase some abstracts and wills,

which had not yet been used to wrap up sausages. Then I set to work in

the cabinets of notaries and advocates and in the public archives,

following the scent afforded by my recovered papers. More than eighty

bulky suits in my own handwriting remain to show how patiently I

studied the rights and claims of our estate, and now I prepared myself

for the task of laying these before the courts.

At this epoch I made acquaintance with the celebrated pleader, Antonio

Testa, under whose direction and advice I embarked upon a series of

litigations which kept me fully occupied for eighteen years, and in the

course of which I became acquainted with the men who haunt our palace of

justice, and learned the chicaneries of legal warfare. Inveterate

abuses, introduced in the remote past, and complicated by the ingenuity

of lawyers through successive generations (most of them men of subtle

brains, some of them devoid of moral rectitude), have been built up into

a system of pleading as false as it is firmly grounded and imbued with

ineradicable insincerity. This system consists, for the most part, of

quibbling upon side-issues, throwing dust in the eyes of judges,

cavilling, misrepresenting, taking advantage of technical errors, doing

everything in short to gain a cause by indirect means. And from this

false system neither honourable nor dishonest advocates are able to

depart.

In justice to the legal profession, I must, however, say that I found

many practicians who combined the gifts of eloquence and intellectual

fervour with urbanity, cordiality, prudence, and disinterested zeal.

Outside the vicious circle of their system they were men of loyalty and

honour. Among these I ought to pay a particular tribute to my friendly

counsel and defender, Signor Testa. Knowing my circumstances and my

upright motives, he refused to take the fees which were his due, and not

unfrequently opened his purse to me at a pinch in my necessities. I have

never met with a lawyer more quick at seizing the strong and weak points

of a case, more rapid in his analysis of piles of documents, more

sagacious in divining the probable issue of a suit, or more acute in

calculating the mental powers, the bias, and the equity of judges. Time

and the circumstances of our several lives have drawn us somewhat apart.

But nothing can diminish the feeling of deep gratitude which I shall

always cherish for one who helped to heal the distractions and to

improve the fallen fortunes of my family.

The final result of eight or nine tedious lawsuits, carried through with

the assistance of Signor Testa, was that I received several parcels of

our estates in Friuli, Vicenza, Bergamo, and Venice, which had been

alienated by fraudulent evasions of entail.[137] Meanwhile I found time

to visit my mother and Gasparo's family. The latter were busily engaged

in concocting and translating plays for my brother's theatre. These

visits, paid with cordiality and frankness on my side, were usually the

occasions of requests for money on my mother's. She begged with maternal

dignity for little loans. I complied to the best of my ability, and

forgot to remind her of her debts. My sister-in-law forced herself to

treat me with an affectation of flattery. My sisters looked upon me with

real affection, checked in its expression by I know not what untoward

influence. My brother accepted me with philosophical indifference.

XXV.

_A collision with my brother's family, due to old grudges and to

present needs.--They make me a married man without my having taken

a wife._

My brother Gasparo's income, derived from his portion of the family

estates, from the interest on my mother's dowry and the annual allowance

for my sisters' maintenance, together with the profits of his writing

and of certain literary services rendered to his Excellency Marco

Foscarini,[138] late Doge of glorious memory, amounted to about 1500

ducats, free of all debts and obligations. This was certainly nothing

very splendid; but neither would the wealth of Croesus have been

anything to boast of in the hands of an extravagant family, ruled only

by the caprice of its component members.

I have mentioned above that Gasparo obtained the upper dwelling in our

house at Venice, which was let for 150 ducats, while we three brothers

received the lower dwelling, at that time inhabited by him. Some few

months were allowed him to remove from the one apartment to the other.

But no sooner had he entered into legal possession of his new habitation

than he, or perhaps I ought to say his wife, let it again to the noble

lady Ginevra Loredan Zeno. She paid the rent of several years in

advance, and installed herself in Gasparo's part of the mansion, while

he, with all his family, continued to inhabit our part with the utmost

sang-froid, taking no further heed of the engagement he was under to us

three brothers. Now we had resolved to put this tenement into good

repair and to let it for some years, until the debts of the estate had

been discharged and we could go to live in it at peace. With this view

we had already found a tenant, who was no other than the Contessa

Ghellini Balbi. She, on her side, had given up her old apartment, which

was already let in advance to other tenants by her landlord. Time went

on, and I saw no sign of our house being abandoned to our use, according

to the family agreement. It appeared only too clearly that the

partition I had demanded, my resolve to pay the family debts out of

income without resorting to sale or mortgage, and my application to the

courts for annulment of contracts made during my father's lifetime, were

all of them unpardonable offences in the eyes of those who had made the

debts, the mortgages, the contracts.

I began by gently asking for the house which was our portion, seeing

that we had resigned the upper dwelling to our brother at his particular

request. No answer reached me; but rumours ran around the city that I

was now attempting to turn my old mother, my three marriageable sisters,

my brother, his wife, and five innocent children into the streets. At

this point I expected that one of those interminable lawsuits, which are

the dishonour of the legal profession, but which never lack advocates to

keep them going, would be commenced against me. In order to lend colour

and substance to their false report, my relatives determined to give me

a wife without consulting me. It was impossible to fix definite

calumnies upon Mme. Ghellini Balbi, because of her exemplary life and

conspicuous piety. But my daily visits to her house offered a pretext

for injurious insinuations; and I soon heard it announced that I was

secretly married to this lady, and that all my plots had only this one

end in view. Such gossip did me honour in some respects. Yet I was

grieved that a lady of excellent conduct, devoted to her only son, and

old enough to be my mother, should be made the butt of malignant

animosity.[139]

Without wasting time or breath in contradicting these unjust and lying

vociferations of my private enemies, I made my mind up to obtain

possession of my house by all the straightforward means in my power.

Accordingly I managed to meet my brother apart from the din of women,

and laid a clear statement before him of my obligations to Mme. Ghellini

Balbi (who ran the risk of remaining without a roof to shelter her) and

of my well-founded rights which were being iniquitously set at nought.

The poor fellow seemed on the point of weeping. His gestures reminded me

of patient Job, while he protested that he had nothing whatever to do

with a state of affairs the injustice of which he frankly admitted. He

added that he had to put up with infernal clamourings--that he was

called a chicken-hearted poltroon, a father without entrails for his

offspring--in short, that he was neither obeyed nor listened to at home.

Then, to convince me that it was not he who opposed my entrance into our

part of the house, he took a pen and wrote and signed a declaration to

the effect that he fully acknowledged the title of his brothers

Francesco, Carlo, and Almorò, and that he would never interfere to

prevent our taking possession of our lawful property.

All these steps proved fruitless. Time pressed, and I found myself

obliged to bring my cause before a judge, who chanced to be his

Excellency Count Galean Angarano, at that time Avvogador del

Comune.[140] What was my astonishment when I saw my sister-in-law, like

an advocate in petticoats, at the head of my mother and my sisters, with

my hen-pecked brother to bring up the rear, come marching into court. I

will not dwell upon this too too comic scene--

"For my Thalia takes no thought to sing."

The judge recognised that my claims were indisputable. But before

pronouncing sentence in my favour he strove to settle matters by

mediation. Conferences took place; first between the bench and his

Excellency the Senator Daniele Reniero, who acted for Mme. Ghellini

Balbi; then between the Senator and my sister-in-law, who was the rock

and stone of our vexation. I was curious to know the upshot of these

whispered confabulations. At length Senator Reniero came up and told me

that if I was willing to disburse sixty ducats, which my sister-in-law

had pressing need of, I might enter at once into possession of the

house without a verdict from the bench. Such a verdict would be appealed

against and would certainly lead to indescribable delays. I thanked his

Excellency for suggesting this arrangement. My sister-in-law received

her ducats, and we obtained our dwelling. I had it straightway put into

repair, for it looked as though it had sustained a siege. Mme. Balbi

went at once to live there with a lease of five years only, while I

retired with my brothers into a cheap house, which I had taken at S.

Ubaldo and furnished with strict regard to economy. Here I arranged for

Almorò's tuition by an excellent ecclesiastic. For my own part, I went

on paying off debts, rebuilding such of our houses as needed it,

prosecuting my lawsuits, and amusing myself in leisure hours with

literature.

XXVI.

_A serious event, depicting the character of my uncle, the Senator

Almorò Cesare Tiepolo._

A very long time had elapsed since I visited my maternal uncle, the

Senator Almorò Cesare Tiepolo. I imagined that my mother and the persons

about her, who were assiduous in paying court to him from motives wholly

alien to my nature, might have prejudiced the good old man against me.

Still I did not choose to undergo the mortification of defending

myself, especially as I could only do so by accusing those for whom at

the bottom of my heart I felt both love and reverence. I knew, moreover,

that our Venetian patricians, though just and dispassionate upon the

bench in their capacity of judges, were singularly liable to be

influenced by what they heard in private at their own homes from suitors

or clients, and that it was extremely difficult to remove impressions

which had once been made upon their minds. This weakness I have always

ascribed to their amiability, and have regarded the nobles of our

Republic as really adorable for qualities of the heart, in spite of the

sentimental bias I have mentioned.

My habitual taciturnity and solitary ways of life, my neglect of petty

social duties, my habit of asking and desiring nothing from fortune,

together with the freedom of my pen, might have won me formidable

enemies, if any such had deigned to look down upon a person of so little

consequence as I am.

My wise and good uncle, who was suffering from a dropsy in the chest,

and not far from death's door, let me know that he should like to see

me. I went at once to his house; and was bidden to take a seat at his

bedside. He began to complain gently that I had so long neglected to

visit him. I answered frankly that I had stayed away through fear of his

having been wrongfully prejudiced against me, and also because I heard

that he was angry with me, perhaps on account of my prolonged absence.

"If I complained," he said, "that my sister and your mother was being

exposed to ill-treatment and affronts, this was no reason why you should

suspend your visits." "I see," I replied, "that my suspicions and my

fears are not without foundation. But this is not the proper time to

trouble you with lengthy narratives in self-defence. Your health is a

matter of concern to me for your sake and for my own. I have tried

everything in my power to avert discords and divisions, even to the

point of doing violence to my naturally pacific temper. I feel sure,

when you recover, as I hope you will with all my heart, that I shall

make it clear to you that I have hurt nobody and attacked nobody, and

that I am only doing all I can to benefit our family, without the least

regard for my mere private interest; nay, that I am bearing the burden

of enormous cares and weighty business, not to speak of exposing myself

to risks and dangers, for the common good."

He was just, prudent, a philosopher, and ill. Therefore he made no

immediate answer. I renewed my daily visits, and had the satisfaction of

hearing afterwards that the venerable old man expressed himself in these

words to my mother: "Believe me, your son Carlo is a good young fellow."

His illness kept increasing, and I perceived, by the persons whom he

urged to visit him, that he was anxious to be reconciled with all of his

acquaintances who might be under the impression that he bore a grudge

against them. A certain Frate Bernardo of the Gesuati, who then passed

for a learned ecclesiastic, acted as his spiritual director, and used to

read at his request portions of the Holy Scriptures aloud to him.

Observing his indifference upon the point of death, this excellent friar

was moved to say: "I do not want you to prepare yourself for death too

much like a philosopher."

Though he had filled important posts in the Government, and had

frequently sat as member of the sublime Council of Ten, he was never

heard, throughout his last illness, to utter the least word regarding

the tribunals of justice or the state.

During his whole lifetime he had taken delight in gathering company

around his hospitable board, and seeing the table furnished with good

cheer, especially with the choicest kinds of fish. Now that he was sick

unto death, and could only take some spoonfuls of such broth as are

administered to dying persons, he still would have the table served as

formerly for guests. Every morning he used to send for one of his

gondoliers, and inquire what sorts of fine fish were that day in the

market. On receiving the man's report, he commented in praise or blame,

as this might be, upon the season and the quality of the fishes for

sale, and the various waters in which they had been caught. After

settling these affairs of the household, he proceeded to religious

exercises, grave discourses with his spiritual director, and prayers of

fervent piety. I ought further to testify that he breathed his last in

the spirit of a great man, philosophically Christian, and that his

example inspired me with the desire to imitate his end.

He possessed the virtue of patience in the highest degree. No one ever

saw his temper stirred by any untoward accident which happened to him.

In order to give a single instance of his intrepid constancy, I will

relate an event which happened some years before his death. One evening,

while alighting from his gondola, he caught his foot in the long and

ample robes of the patrician mantle, and was upon the point of falling

into the canal. The gondolier, in his anxiety to catch and keep him up,

let the oar go which he was holding in his hands. The oar fell with

violence upon the right arm of his master, and broke it. The gondolier

was not aware of what had happened; and my uncle, though he knew very

well, uttered no complaint. He ascended the stairs, and when he reached

his apartment, the valet came forward to help him off, as usual, with

his cloak. Then at last he remarked with imperturbable long-suffering:

"Pull gently, for my right arm is in two pieces." The uproar among the

servants, who were greatly attached to him, was tremendous. The

gondolier ran up, weeping bitterly and begging to be pardoned. He bade

them all be calm, and said to the man: "You did me harm when you were

meaning to do me good. What fault have you committed, which requires my

pardon?" After this he had to lie forty days in bed without altering his

position, at the surgeon's orders; yet he never uttered a syllable that

betrayed any impatience. I could relate a number of such traits of

character, but they have nothing to do with the Memoirs of my life.

After his death, which I felt very deeply, as every one could see, a

certain Signor Giovannantonio Guseò came to call on me. This man

practised as notary, land-surveyor, advocate, registrar, and judge in

certain courts of Friuli. He was known to be more wily than the old

Greek Sinon, and had assisted my brother's wife in procuring the

alienation of certain portions of our entailed estates. Now he suggested

that it would do me great honour, as a sign of affectionate remembrance,

if I were to contribute ten sacks of flour and two casks of wine

annually to my mother, in addition to her dowry. I saw at once from whom

this proposal emanated, and admired the address with which the proper

moment had been chosen for working on my feelings. Such artifices,

however, were repugnant to my nature; and changing my tone from sadness

to cold reserve, I replied to the following effect. "I thought my

mother's preference for my brother Gasparo's family unfortunate; my own

house was always open to her, and here she would be revered and loved by

three respectful sons. Here she would enjoy her yearly maintenance, and

the income of her dowry. By refusing our offer, she only affronted us.

By accepting it, she would confer a benefit on Gasparo, the number of

whose family would be diminished. Meanwhile, the obligation I was under

of reducing debts, repairing buildings on the property, and reclaiming

parts of the entailed estates, rendered it impossible that I should

weaken the insufficient resources at my command by any such donation as

Signor Guseò had proposed." This answer set tongues wagging again, and

revived the opinion that I was a downright Phalaris.

The estate of my uncle Tiepolo had gained nothing by his regency of

Zante and by other lucrative appointments. The probity of his character

did not suffer him to enrich himself at the expense of the State.

Accordingly, he provided by will that all his debts should be paid off,

appending a schedule of his creditors. The residue he bequeathed to his

sister Girolama for her lifetime, with reversion to my mother. On the

same sad occasion my mother inherited a portion of some landed property

in Friuli, which had belonged to an old aunt Tiepolo, who died

intestate. This, united to her dowry, formed a sufficient fund for her

establishment.

My mother continued to regard me as her sixth finger, amputated without

any suffering on her part. Of course she had the right to dispose of her

affections as she felt inclined, and to keep her tender heart open for

the persons who possessed her favour. It was my misfortune not to

possess it, but I did not envy those who had that privilege; and I can

assure my readers that what caused me the greatest annoyance with regard

to my mother, was seeing her always without a ducat to spend according

to her fancy. This state of things continued when the whole property of

that branch of the Tiepolos passed into her hands upon the death of her

sister Girolama, who left furniture and a considerable amount of money

to my mother, jointly with my brother Gasparo and his children.

XXVII.

_It is decided that I was a husband, though I had no wife.--Some

anecdotes of a serious character._

An event happened which clenched the gossip of my imaginary marriage to

the Contessa Ghellini Balbi. The patrician Benedetto Balbi, Canon of

Padua and Abbot of Lonigo, a gentleman abundantly endowed with gifts of

nature and of fortune, who was this lady's brother-in-law, had caused

himself to be legally appointed sole guardian of his nephew Paolo, the

widow's only son. The lad may have been about ten years old at this

epoch; and his uncle resolved to separate him from his mother, and to

place him in a school kept by the Somascan fathers, at San Cipriano on

the island of Murano.[141] His mother, who was tenderly devoted to her

son, did not oppose his entrance into this college, but resented his

being torn from the arms which had nursed and fostered him till now, as

though she were a peril to his youth and had no claim to supervise his

education in the school. Sharp and angry words passed; and Mme. Balbi

applied to the courts, demanding to be nominated guardian together with

her brother-in-law. The conflagration spread, and I, innocent as I was,

found myself involved in it. With the object of strengthening his case,

the Cavaliere went about the town, loudly protesting that his

sister-in-law had contracted a second alliance with Count Carlo Gozzi;

that she had ceased thereby to be a Balbi, and had lost all rights over

the boy, who belonged to his family. I laughed, as usual, with the lady

over the pertinacity of folk in thinking we were married. But my

laughter was turned to seriousness, when the Cavaliere finally declared

his intention to be free of legal quarrels, and to abandon all the

schemes which he had formed for his nephew's advantage, leaving him

entirely to his mother's authority.

Assuming a Catonian gravity, I pointed out to Mme. Balbi that she ought

to waive her just claims and to stomach her natural resentment for the

sake of her son. I firmly believed in my own soul that an ounce of

sincere love was worth more than a hundred pounds of gold. Yet I

reminded her that she was not in the position to make up to her boy for

the loss of his uncle's property. This reasoning, which I regard as mere

sophistry, but which the world accepts as irrefutable, made the lady

burst into a flood of tears and then exclaim: "You are right! I am a

poor woman, and should be condemned by everybody, perhaps even in the

future by my own son. I am ready to sacrifice my rights; I will bury in

my breast the stirrings of maternal love, the sense of insult and of

injury, all that may prove prejudicial to the interests of my adored

son, on whom I am unable to confer those benefits which lie within his

uncle's power. Pray do me the further kindness of undertaking to explain

the unalterable decision at which I have arrived."

I praised her virtuous resolution, and reported to the noble gentleman,

her brother-in-law, from whom I have always received distinguished marks

of politeness, the decision she had come to. In doing so, I attempted to

draw a picture of her merits, and to maintain that her feelings were not

merely excusable, but worthy of the highest commendation. The Cavaliere

replied with some emotion: "You must not take me for a wild beast! I

mean that the boy shall be visited by his mother, and looked after in

all his wants, the charge of supplying which I take for the future on

myself. I am quite willing to let her bring him back from time to time

to dine with her, and only stipulate that her demonstrations of

tenderness shall not interfere with his education and discipline." These

solemn words of covenant having been exchanged, I was the instrument of

separating the boy from his mother's embraces, and of conducting him to

his appointed school. His behaviour on this occasion, in which firmness

blent with filial emotion, made me feel sure that he was destined to

reward his mother's virtues and his uncle's benevolence with conduct

worthy of the highest honours of his country. Only death, which spared

neither of his relatives, and which prevented them from reaping the

fruits of their respective love and kindness, defeated these

prognostications. The mother died twelve, and the uncle fifteen years

after the events I have narrated. Young Balbi grew up to be an ornament,

by his intellectual and moral qualities, by his probity and purity of

manners, by his sympathy for the oppressed, and by his thoroughly

national temper, to the Venetian Republic, in the administration of

which his birth opened for him a career of usefulness and honour.

XXVIII.

_I should not have believed what is narrated in this chapter, if I

had not seen it with my own eyes._

Family jars and discords have this effect upon embittered minds that

each member, wherever the wrong may really lie, is apt to think, not

only that he is in the right, but that the right is absolutely and

wholly on his side. For my part, I am not altogether sure that I was

justified in doing what I did, and what I have described above with

perfect candour.

I was aware that the theatrical speculation into which my brother had

been induced to enter had taken a bad turn, and that worse might be

expected in the future. A malignant and vindictive spirit would have

found some satisfaction in these circumstances. As it was, I felt

sincerely sorry, and flattered myself on being therefore free from

malice. In proportion as things went from bad to worse, the rancour

against myself increased, as though I had been responsible for an

enterprise which I had always solemnly condemned by act and word.

I kept up relations with my brother's family, wishing to maintain the

links of relationship unbroken, and to explain from time to time what I

was doing for the common good. In spite of these demonstrations of a

kindly feeling, which I admit were never very gushing, I saw to my deep

regret that the wounds caused by the partition of our patrimony had not

ceased to bleed.

The youngest of my sisters, Chiara by name, induced perhaps by some

presentiment of coming trouble, asked me one day to take her under the

protection of us three brothers. I cordially acceded to her request, and

would have done the like by my mother and our two other sisters, had

they not spurned the acceptance of what they had hitherto rejected as a

great misfortune.

I told this youngest of my sisters that, our mother not being under my

roof, my brother Francesco occupied with the estates in Friuli, Almorò a

mere boy engaged in studies, and I absorbed in legal affairs for the

common interests of the family, she could not with any propriety be left

to the custody of a rough and stupid serving-woman. I therefore begged

her to enter a convent for a while, until we should have changed our

mode of living, and should be in a position to receive her more suitably

and to take thought for her proper establishment. My sisters are neither

foolish nor ill-natured. Chiara accepted my proposal, and was placed in

the convent of S. Maria degli Angeli at Pordenone, as a young lady in

charge of the Superior.

Any one exposed, as I was, to the rage of angry tongues, blackening me

with the epithets of unjust, inhumane, tyrannical, marrying me against

my will, and capable of insinuating the worst of charges against me for

my guardianship of a sister, would act rightly if he took the

precautions I did. Yet the precautions of the most prudent man on earth

do not always bear the good results expected of them. I speak with

experience derived from long study of ill-inclined men and

worse-inclined women, who have invariably taken my unalterable good

faith for venomous maliciousness.

I was excessively pained to observe that the bitterness created in my

brother Gasparo's family by the events I have narrated remained

unconquerable. It is true that they concealed, as far as possible, their

grudge against me, whenever I paid them visits and treated them with

brotherly good-will. This grudge, however, could not help showing itself

in public; and it did so in a monstrous fashion, which I should not have

credited unless I had been an eye-witness of the scandal.

My brothers and I were in the habit, during carnival-time, of frequently

attending the theatre of S. Angelo, which was under the direction of my

sister-in-law far rather than her husband. Amusement was less our object

than the wish to support, so far as in us lay, a speculation to which we

feared our brother had been sacrificed. We persuaded Mme. Ghellini Balbi

to accompany us; and she entered into our designs by applauding as

heartily as any of the audience.

They had given at this theatre a translation of the French comedy called

_Esop at the Court_, which succeeded partly by the elegance of my

brother's Italian version, and partly by its novelty. Rumour told us

that the sequel, by the same French author, entitled _Esop in the Town_,

was being translated and would soon appear. We were eager to be present

at the first night, to back the piece with our approval, and to witness

its triumph.