_I re-open a lawsuit, and continue to scribble my fantastic pieces for
the stage_.
In this same year, 1766, my brothers warmly urged me to revive the
lawsuit against Marchese Terzi of Bergamo.[34] Since our family
documents had been dispersed, and only three old wills and some
worm-eaten summaries remained to guide me, I obtained an injunction
ordering the defendant to produce the deeds whereby he claimed the
disputed property, and the papers relating to several suits between his
ancestors and ours. At last two enormous chests, full of musty writings,
were delivered at the Magistracy of the Avvogaria. Perhaps my
adversaries thought to dash my spirits and damp my ardour by this ocean
of pages which had to be explored. If so, they were mistaken. I procured
one of those licenses, which are technically called courtesies, from
Signor Daniele Zanchi, the defendant's advocate, to study the documents
at his chambers, and set myself down with imperturbable phlegm to peruse
millions of lines in antique characters, faded, half-effaced,
semi-Gothic, and for the most part hieroglyphical. I selected those
which seemed to the purpose, and had forty-two volumes of transcripts
filled at my cost by Signor Zanchi's copyists.
Painful circumstances leave ineffaceable impressions on the memory. The
examination of those vast masses of manuscript, word by word and letter
by letter, so different from delightful literature in prose or verse,
taxed every nerve and fibre. I well remember that my study of them
lasted over more than two months, in the dead of a hard snowy winter.
Signor Zanchi, taking pity on my shivering wretchedness, kindly
furnished me with a brazier of live coals; and yet I thought, what with
the irksome labour and the cold, that I should have to breathe my last
between the walls of the fortress of my enemies.
I shall not weary my readers with a detailed account of this tedious
lawsuit. My brother Almoro, whose heart was always in the right place,
contributed to the expenses according to his means. My brother
Francesco, remaining a wary economist, refused to exceed an annual
payment of 150 _lire_ during the progress of the suit. My brother
Gasparo only lent his name and assent. The following anecdote is
characteristic of his easy-going, popularity-loving temperament. Some
gentlemen, friends and supporters of the Marquis, asked him with serious
faces: "What the devil is this annoyance you are causing Marchese
Terzi?" To which he shrugged his shoulders and answered: "I know nothing
about the matter. They are devices of my brother Carlo, a litigious
fellow, who thinks that he is in the right here." He did not mean, I
fully believe, to shun responsibility and odium by shifting the blame to
my shoulders. This answer was only of a piece with the pacific indolence
which made him bear infinite wretchedness in his own home.
In the course of two years I had to expend 17,000 _lire_ on the costs of
this suit; and had it not been for the generosity of friends, among whom
Signor Innocenzio Massimo stood first, Marchese Terzi would have scored
one of those victories which make us inclined to doubt of Providence.
Beside the anxiety and incessant labour which preyed upon my health and
spirits, I was annoyed by my adversary's powerful friends, who went
about the town denouncing me for a quarrelsome, vexatious, captious, and
inequitable fellow. Rude rebukes addressed to me by such persons I met
with significant smiles and silence, never deigning to take up the
cudgels in my own defence against accusations which I knew to be
discourteous and baseless. In addition to all these sources of
discomfort, I had to fight the battle single-handed; for my excellent
friend and advocate, Signor Antonio Testa, was compelled by stress of
business to leave me in the heat of action.
It is not to be wondered at that I fell ill at last. But what will seem
more wonderful, nay, almost incredible, is that I sought distraction
during my few leisure hours in planning and composing dramatic pieces. I
used to take sheets of paper on which I had sketched the outlines of
scenes in my pocket down to a coffee-house on the Riva degli Schiavoni.
There I engaged a room facing San Giorgio, had coffee brought, and
ordered pen and ink. Thus furnished, I forgot my troubles for a while in
the elaboration of soliloquies and dialogues. It was in this way that,
while my suit dragged on through three tempestuous years, I produced the
_Augel Belverde_, the _Re de'Genj_, the _Donna Vendicativa_, the _Caduta
di Donna Elvera_, and the _Pubblico Segreto_. I flatter myself that none
of these plays betrayed the melancholy and distraction of a harassed
brain. They were welcomed with enthusiasm by the public, and brought
fame and profit to my friends the actors.
After a long course of anxious litigation, complicated by somewhat
tortuous proceedings on the part of my opponents, the cause was settled
in the following way. I obtained as compensation for my claims a farm of
about forty-six acres in the Paduan district, several houses in Venice,
some substantial and some ruinous, a sum of money in the funds of the
Mint, and three thousand ducats by way of repayment of arrears. A solemn
agreement was signed, which may God preserve unbroken through all the
centuries to come! After paying the costs and debts contracted in this
long campaign, and assigning their portions of the balance to my
brothers, I took breath again, like a man broken by a tedious and
disastrous journey, who stretches out his wearied limbs upon a bed of
down.