XLVIII.

_A pliant disposition is apt to neglect the dictates of reflection.--I

proceed with my narrative regarding the Ricci and myself._

If the company loaded me with gratitude, Teodora Ricci was not

behindhand with the same sweet incense. She professed herself wholly and

simply indebted to my zeal, good management, and friendship for her

victory. She did everything in her power, and laid herself out in every

way to secure my daily visits. So long as I frequented her house, she

felt safe from her persecutors; and her main ambition was to commit me

to an open and deliberate partiality. She did not, however, know the

true characters of her comrades, nor yet my fundamental principles and

temperament; nor, what was worse, did she know herself.

Had I declared that open partiality which she desired, it is certain

that I should have exposed her to still more trying enmities and

persecutions. The managers of the troupe, governed exclusively by

calculations of interest, would have felt themselves compelled to curry

favour with me by indulging her in all her whims, demands, breaches of

discipline, and a thousand feminine caprices. Nothing could be more

alien to my real character than to make myself the proud and domineering

protector of one actress to the injury of her companions. Besides, her

views and mine were so fundamentally at variance upon some elementary

points of conduct, that I doubted whether a liaison between us could

ever be of long duration. Light-headed, vain, and sensitive to flattery,

she had no regard for prudence and propriety; nor did she recognise

those faults in herself which were always involving her in difficulties.

I knew, moreover, that characters like hers must sooner or later incline

to those who caress their foibles and pervert their judgment, while they

come to regard their real friends and honest counsellors as tiresome

pedants. She had no grounds for believing that I was in love with her.

Yet, such was her self-assurance, that she interpreted my kind offices

on her behalf into signs of submission to her charms. Finally, though I

was far from believing all she said about her affection for my person, I

determined to extend to her a cordial friendship.

There are two classes of sinners, whom the world, however dissolute,

will always hold in abhorrence--the shameless cynic and the hypocrite.

Libertines invariably attempt to confound prudent and respectful friends

of women with the odious tribe of hypocrites.[43] I delighted in the

theatre. I was known, appreciated, and courted by actors and actresses

of all sorts, composers, singers, ballet-dancers. They came to me for

advice and support on all occasions. I had to write pieces for them,

prologues, epilogues, and what not. I was consulted about the

arrangement of pantomimic scenes, dances, words for music. If the

innumerable actresses with whom I conversed were to give their

testimony, it would appear that I never took advantage of these

opportunities to play the part of a seducer or a libertine. These

Memoirs I am writing, together with the whole tenour of my life through

a long course of years, suffice to clear me from the imputation of

hypocrisy. Some of my readers will probably suppose that I am making a

vain parade of philosophy in order to gain credit for virtues I did not

possess. Others will call me a simpleton for not availing myself more

freely of my exceptional position among the beauties of the stage. What

I am going to relate concerning my friendship for the Ricci will show

that I erred upon the side of simplicity and folly. It was my fixed

intention to benefit her, and at the same time to benefit the troupe I

had taken under my protection, by making her an able artist and

verifying my own opinion of her talents in the teeth of jealousy and

opposition.

She had spirit, a good voice, a retentive memory, extraordinary

rapidity of perception, and a fine figure, which she knew how to set off

to the best advantage. On the other hand, she was inattentive to the

conduct of a dialogue, deficient in naturalness and in real sensibility

for the roles she undertook. These defects, which are fatal to scenical

illusion, proceeded from lack of intelligence, want of real heart for

her business, and all kinds of feminine distractions. Some literary

culture would have been of service to her; but, like all Italian

actresses, she was deficient in such culture. According to her own

account, she had been the most neglected of five or more sisters. After

taking some lessons in dancing, she abandoned that branch of the

profession because of a physical weakness in her knee-joints. Her

mother, poor, and with a drunken husband, then made her the domestic

drudge. Since she showed some talent for acting, however, a certain

Pietro Rossi begged this woman to let her enter his company of players.

She made no difficulties; and signing the girl's forehead with a large

maternal cross, sent her out into the world with this practical

injunction: "Go, and earn your bread; do not come back to be a burden to

the family, where there are too many mouths to feed already." Throwing

herself with courage and closed eyes into her new career, Teodora won

applause by her natural aptitude for acting, and by the charm of her

youth. The piece I wrote for her placed her well before the public, and

I was not at all doubtful of her future success. Yet I could not but

apprehend that her defective moral education, her inflammable and

reckless disposition, might make me one day repent of my cordiality and

intimacy.

In conversation with this young woman I enjoyed no exchange of wit or

sentiment, no perspicacity of intellect, no piquant sallies and

discussions. On the other hand, her way of meeting me was always frank

and open; she showed much decency and neatness in her poverty; told

anecdotes with comic grace; mimicked her comrades, the actresses, with

spirit; evinced a real repugnance for immodesty; betrayed the

ingenuousness of her nature by a hundred little traits. What above all

attracted me towards her was that she could not tell a lie without

showing by involuntary blushes how much the effort cost her. Time taught

me that I ought to mistrust her apparent ingenuousness. The artless

sallies with which she turned old friends and benefactors into ridicule

made me reflect that she might come to treat me in like manner. Her

blushes, when she told a fib, did not spring from a dislike of lying,

but from anger with herself for not being able to distort the truth more

cleverly. Yet self-love is a weakness so ingrained in human frailty,

that men are always ready to believe that they will fare better than

their neighbours, because they think they have deserved better, or fancy

themselves preferred by the woman on whose very faults they put an

indulgent interpretation. This was my case with the Ricci.

I was never able to induce her to sacrifice even a few hours a day to

reading good books or exercising her mind by writing. Arguments,

entreaties, reproaches were all thrown away. She excused herself by

pleading her domestic duties; and though I was ever anxious to spend our

time together in useful studies, as I had done with other actresses, I

could not bring her to do more than con the parts she had to play upon

the stage. Probably she thought that her native pluck and talent were

sufficient to sustain her without troubling her brains by serious work.

The duties which she always pleaded consisted in sitting at her

toilet-table before the eternal looking-glass, arranging laces, changing

ribands, altering the folds of veils, matching colours, and such-like

frivolities. All these things are useful with a view to stage effect;

but exclusive devotion to them distracts the mind from the higher

exigencies of dramatic art, leads an actress to court applause by

illegitimate means, and brings her in course of time to mere posing and

peacocking upon the boards before the eyes of voluptuaries in the boxes.

The Ricci was only too prone to such faults; and besides, her purse

could not stand the expenses of her toilette.

When I ventured to express my fears upon these points, she betrayed her

real way of thinking by replies to the following effect: "If we do not

earn more than our fixed wages, how on earth are we poor actresses to

hold out in a profession like ours?" I did not conceal my abhorrence of

the principles implied in such remarks; and she professed that she had

only spoken in jest. At the same time, her behaviour was so good, she

ruled her house with such economy, paid her debts so regularly, and

conducted herself with such propriety, that I hoped, by good advice and

by getting her salary increased, to save her from the evil influences of

a misdirected early training. Vain illusion to flatter oneself that one

can ever cure an actress of the faults instilled in her from childhood!

I was perhaps blinded by the partiality I felt for her; and no man, face

to face with a woman, can trust the clearness of his insight. Six years

of continual assiduity, friendship, benefits, were not worth one straw

against the poison she had imbibed. The woman who, with a sound

education, might have become a person of true culture and a real friend,

gave herself up to flattery and her own perverted inclinations; so that

in the end she brought upon me troubles which the world has judged of

serious importance and public gravity.[44]