Chapter IX: Part 9

In compliance with this nobleman's request, I told the whole tale over again. "So then," he said, "make a plain and brief statement in writing of the facts you have described to me. Put it in the form of a memorial to the Supreme Tribunal. Petition to have your honour vindicated. Enclose Gratarol's defamatory letter. Name your witnesses. Add anything you think of use, and bring the whole to me."

I obeyed him blindly; and I do not suppose that any one will be so foolish as to imagine that I departed in one hair's-breadth from the truth while appealing to those awful Three, before the very name of whom the whole town trembles.[77]

The difficulty of narrating a long series of closely connected incidents prevented me from making my memorial as short as I could have wished. Such as it was, I took it, with its appended documents, to Senator Renier. When he had read it through, he said: "I must confess that the tribunal before which this document will appear is not accustomed to peruse compositions of such length. Yet I can find no superfluities which could be omitted. So it will serve its purpose."

What happened to my supplication is utterly unknown to me. I can only say that on the morning of the 23rd of January, while I was still in bed, the same footman who had brought me the letter of the 18th was introduced into my chamber. He handed me a sealed missive, saying: "My master bade me give this note into your own hands." I took it, and read what follows:--

"SIR COUNT, my most revered friend,--In complete contradiction of
the sentiments expressed by me in a letter of some days ago, I beg
you to understand by these present, which are in no way different
from the sincere esteem and good-will I have entertained for you
through many years, that I never meant to offend you; and that,
forgetting byegones,[78] I shall continue to profess toward you
the same regard and friendship, in the hope of receiving from you a
reciprocation of feeling commensurate with the candour of my
declaration.

"From my house, the 23rd of January 1776/1777.

"Your most devoted servant and friend,

"PIETRO ANTONIO GRATAROL."

Folding the paper, I bade the servant carry my respects to his master.

Visitors arrived, and Gratarol's letter of retractation circulated through the city in a score of copies. There was the usual result of tittle-tattle, especially among the idlest and most numerous members of the community.

I repaired to the senator who had espoused my cause, in order to express my thanks and to report what had occurred. On hearing that I had received the letter, he replied with gravity: "I am well aware of it." "I was thinking," I continued, "of paying that gentleman a visit. He has been twice to my house; and as I harbour no ill-will against him, and can excuse the errors into which his heated temper drove him, I should like to assure him of my cordiality by a friendly embrace." Signor Renier dissuaded me from taking this course. "You have ability and penetration," he observed, "but you do not sufficiently understand the nature of men puffed up with pride. In case you meet Gratarol, and only if he should be the first to raise his hat, you may return the salute with reserved politeness. Do not extend your civility to words or any inconsiderate demonstrations. A man so perversely proud as he is may stir up new mischief and involve you in further embarrassments. I take it that now the actors will continue to perform your comedy." "I do not know," I answered, "but from what I have heard, the piece has been withdrawn." "Wrong, very wrong!" he rejoined; "that arrogant fellow will try to make it be believed that his retractation was given as an equivalent for the suspension of the performance. They ought at least to put your comedy once more upon the boards, letting the public know that people of importance have bespoken it." I could only answer that, so far as I was concerned, the production, repetition, continued presentations, and suspension of the play had taken place without my interference. Comedians, I added, only looked to their own pecuniary interests. The senator proceeded to deliver an eloquent and singularly penetrative discourse upon the corruption of the age, and the ill-regulated ways of thinking which had been introduced and widely diffused amongst us. I have never heard this matter handled with more acumen, learning, precision of judgment, logical clearness, breadth of view, and pungent truth. I am speaking only of an elevated mind and ready tongue. I do not pretend to see into the inmost hearts of men.[79]

When I took my leave, I resolved to carry out the recommendations of Signor Renier to the letter. In obedience to this determination, I told Sacchi what he had said about the repetition of my comedy. He replied that he should not have withdrawn it except for the behaviour of Signora Ricci. During the last two evenings she mumbled and gabbled out her part in a way to provoke the audience. Catcalls from the pit and gallery and opprobrious epithets from the boxes were showered upon her; all of which, together with the reproaches of her comrades, she bore with stolid indifference. "Verily," cried I, "Gratarol owes a great deal to that poor woman. For his sake she fell down a staircase, and now she bears the brunt of public outrage! You have done well to stop a comedy which ought to have been damned beyond redemption on the first night."

To wind up the episode of Signor Gratarol, I may say, in conclusion, that I often met him both in Venice and at Padua. To his credit let it be spoken, that he never stooped one inch from the high perch of his incorrigible haughtiness. His hat stuck to that cage of cockchafers he called his head, as though it had been nailed there. Mindful of the advice I had received, and which amounted to a command, I refrained from bowing. I should have liked to be on good terms with him, and felt uncomfortable at the rudeness I was bound to display. Had he drawn his sword upon me, I could have understood that his retractation had been forced. But there was nothing in his stupid inurbanity to justify this supposition. Who could have divined that he was planning a flight to Stockholm, and that he would draw his sword upon me there and stab me with words, while I remained at Venice?

LXII.

_A tragic accident, with a happy termination._

A few months after these occurrences, my brother Gasparo, who had fallen ill of too much study and harassing cares, went to Padua to consult the physicians of that famous university. Though we no longer shared the same home, and had divided our patrimony, I always regarded him as my friend and master. The news I received of his sad state of health, which declined from bad to worse, in spite of the most skilful medical assistance, caused me the gravest uneasiness.

One morning a gondolier in the service of Mme. Dolfin-Tron brought me a letter which she had received from Professor Giovanni Marsili at Padua, together with a note from his mistress. The note urgently begged me to repair to her at once. The letter contained news of far more serious import. From it I learned that my poor brother, whether oppressed by dark and melancholical phantasies, or by the delirium of a burning fever which attacked him, had thrown himself in a fit of exaltation from a window into the Brenta. He had fallen with his chest upon a great stone; and though he had been brought alive out of the river, he was speechless, spat blood continually, and lay insensible, plunged in profound lethargy, and consumed with a mortal fever, which left but little hope of his survival.

In spite of my philosophy, the reading of this letter well-nigh deprived me of my wits, and I ran in a state of distraction to that noble lady. I found her stretched upon a sofa, drowned in tears. No sooner did she cast eyes upon me than she rose, and rushed into my arms upon the point of fainting. "Dear friend," she sobbed out, as soon as she found power to speak, "go to Padua at once; save my father for me, save my father!"[80] Then she fell back upon the sofa and shed a torrent of tears.

What though I needed comfort myself, I strove to comfort her affliction, by promising to go upon the spot to Padua, and by reminding her that my brother's case might not be so desperate as was supposed.

I shall not describe my hurried journey. At Fusina I ran up against Count Carlo di Coloredo, who asked me with much sweetness of manner whether there was anything astir in Venice. I believe that I brutally said "Nothing," as I jumped into a carriage and departed. The gloomy anticipation of finding my poor brother a corpse grew upon me with increasing strength as I approached the walls of Padua, shutting out the sense of water, earth, trees, animals, and men upon that doleful journey.

When I arrived, I alighted at my friend Innocenzio Massimo's hospitable dwelling, and was received, as always, with open arms. Sadness was written on the faces of all his family. I hardly dared to inquire after my brother; and when I summoned courage to do so, I was told that he was yet alive, but in a state which left too little hope.

I repaired at once to his lodgings in the Prato della Valle. There I found Mme. Jeanne Sarah Cenet, a Frenchwoman of some five-and-fifty years, mere skin and bones, who was attending unremittingly to the invalid, half-mad herself with grief and tears and watching. She gave me a detailed account of my brother's condition. He lay there, a scarcely breathing corpse, afflicted with continuous fever, incapable of speech, taking no nourishment, and barely swallowing a few drops of water. The haemoptysis had ceased, and the expectoration was only tinged with blood.

I asked what doctor was attending him. She replied that there were four. Without questioning their ability, I was terrified at the number of them. Then she added that a fifth physician, the celebrated Professor della Bona, had been called into one consultation. He had suggested certain remedies, which the other four doctors rejected as frivolities, and none of them had been employed. "Very well!" said I.

At this point they came to tell me that the invalid, on hearing my voice from his bedroom, had opened his eyes and spoken these words very faintly: "My brother Charles!" I went to him and tried to rouse him. Drowned in his lethargy, he made no answer; but I thought I could detect upon his face some spark of relief.

One of the four doctors boasted of having restored my brother to life when he was taken from the river, by using the methods prescribed by the Magistrates of Public Health for the resuscitation of drowned persons. I went to offer this man an honorarium, and found him surrounded by his witnesses, engaged in drawing up a memorial to the Magistrates of Health. It set forth the prodigious energy with which he, the doctor, had successfully employed their methods on the person of Count Gasparo Gozzi, and wound up with an energetic petition for the golden medal awarded in such circumstances to the operator. He was anxious to relate the whole event, to enlarge upon his merits, and to read aloud his eloquent memorial. I begged him to spare me what could only torture an afflicted fancy with fresh images of sorrow. Then I placed some sequins in his hand, and left him to the elaboration of his petition. Afterwards, I heard that he had received the medal, and I bore no grudge against the needy expeditious son of science.

My brother passed some days and nights between life and death, in his deep lethargy and ardent fever, without taking nourishment. Mme. Cenet used to force open his jaws and insinuate little balls of butter between his teeth in a coffee-spoon. This was all the food he had, licking the spoon and swallowing the butter without consciousness. The four doctors came to see him twice a day very kindly, for they had all been urgently besought to do so by Mme. Dolfin Tron. They looked at the water, examined the expectoration, felt the pulse, affirmed that it was a mortal fever, shrugged their shoulders, and went away again.

The anxious thoughts which weighed upon my mind, fatiguing cares for the sick man, errands I had to run, and the great heat of the season, contributed to tax my strength. But, in addition, I had to carry on a voluminous correspondence daily with Venice, writing long letters to Mme. Dolfin Tron, to the secretary of the Riformatori di Padova,[81] and to other persons. My brother held an office under the Riformatori, which brought him in seven or eight hundred ducats a year. One day I received a pressing letter from the noble lady above mentioned, informing me that many applicants were already intriguing and canvassing for this post, in the expectation of my brother's death. Her husband, who presided at the board, and herself were both of opinion that I ought to apply in writing for the office. She guaranteed my unopposed election if I did so.

Instead of relieving my mind, this letter only added to my sadness. I answered that I was grateful for the counsels she had given, and for her generous promises; but she ought to know my temper, and to remember that I had refused to compete for the far more important and lucrative office of Master of the Posts to Vienna, which she had recommended, and for which she had engaged the influence of her powerful consort. I had undertaken heavy charges for the sake of my family, but I did not care to burden my shoulders with affairs which involved public responsibility. I had neither wife nor children, was averse to taking place among the great, disliked the ceremonies and observances which office necessitates, did not want to become rich, and was satisfied with my moderate estate. To see my brother in health again, I would willingly strip myself to my shirt of all that I possessed: but I civilly declined the offer which she generously made.

This called forth an answer, in which the lady treated me as a Quixotic hero of romance. She insisted that I should send in a petition for the office, and repeated that various applicants were moving heaven and earth to secure the reversion of it. In conclusion, she told me that I was in duty bound to accept a post of emolument which would enable me to assist my brother's family.

Here I detected the real motive which urged her to make me assume the part of candidate against my inclination. I was embittered when I remembered how much I had already done for more than thirty years to protect the interests of my kindred, prosecuting their lawsuits, paying off their debts, and fighting their battles with a host of litigious claimants. Now, forsooth, I was to be goaded into dragging the chain of an onerous and troublesome office, for which I felt myself entirely unfit.

I replied that no pricks of conscience with regard to my brother's family impelled me to seek what I neither desired nor deserved. If an application were made in my name (for I well knew that my sister-in-law was capable of taking such a step), I should feel myself obliged to utter a protest. Here I was at Padua, ready to spend my blood for my brother. If he survived, by the favour of God, I hoped that the Riformatori would not deprive him of his post. If he died, to my infinite sorrow, the tribunal would be able to award it to some fitting person, who deserved it more than I did.

I hoped to be delivered from this well-meant tyranny. But such was not the case. Doctor Bartolommeo Bevilacqua, rector of the public schools of Venice, and my good friend, arrived at Padua. He had been sent off post-haste by the lady to persuade me into taking the step which she thought it a folly to refuse. I repeated all that I had previously urged, and declared that my mind was made up to accept no office under any magistracy. I meant to remain a peace-loving madman to the end. Perhaps I shall be condemned for the repugnance I have always felt to becoming the slave of great folk and public interests; but this point in my character is fixed and ineradicable. I may add that the result of these negotiations was to free me from the pertinacious patronage against which I rebelled with my whole nature.

Under these various anxieties and the heat of the season my health gave away. I was seized with a violent fever, which confined me to bed for three days. During that time the news which I received about my brother grew always worse and worse. When I was able to leave my room, I went to Mme. Cenet. She told me that a priest had been summoned to assist him in his passage from this world. Two of the doctors, on examining his expectoration, found that it consisted of pure matter. They concluded that the lungs, bruised by his fall, had begun to gangrene, and that he had only a few hours to live. I asked whether Professor della Bona had repeated his visit. She answered, No. Happening just then to catch sight of that eminent physician passing along the Prato della Valle, I ran out, and besought him to come up and give a look at my poor dying brother. He willingly complied; and on the way I told him what the doctors had discovered.

At this point I am obliged to exchange the tragic tone for comic humour, and shall perhaps appear satirical against my will.

The worthy professor listened attentively a long time to my brother's breathing. Then he said: "The respiration is certainly weak, but unimpeded. There can be no question of gangrene. Where is that purulent expectoration?" We brought him the vessel, which he inspected closely, and laid aside with these words: "There is no pus there; it is only butter." And so it was. The butter which Mme. Cenet administered had been spat up from time to time by the patient. "Our invalid," continued the physician, "is dying of nothing else but an acute fever. Has he drunk the manna-water I recommended, and have you made the injections of quinine?" Mme. Cenet answered that these remedies had not been used, because the other doctors disapproved of them. "Fine!" he replied. "What was the object then of calling me in? I am not accustomed to play the part of Truffaldino." Turning to me, he added: "Your brother's life hangs upon a thread. I cannot answer for it in the state of extreme weakness to which he is reduced. Yet, though the case looks desperate, follow my prescriptions, and repeat them frequently."

I begged him not to abandon the sick man, and superintended the treatment he had ordered. Gradually the fever abated. My brother opened his eyes, and began to utter a few words. He took small quantities of stronger food, and swallowed moderate doses of quinine. Then arrived a terrible crisis. His whole alimentary canal, from the oesophagus to the rectum, was covered with those ulcers which medical men call _apthae_. Professor Della Bona regarded this as very serious. But in a few days my brother regained strength, sat up in bed, and joked with the doctor. Then, at the end of another period, he left his couch, ate with appetite, and composed some sonnets. His health, undermined by study, misfortunes, advanced age, and a mortal illness, was now in as good a state as could be expected under the circumstances.

Seeing him thus re-established, I was able to leave Padua. But I ought to add, that when I went to express my heartfelt thanks to Professor Della Bona, and to press a fee upon him, that generous and benevolent man refused to accept anything. He was paid enough, he said, by the recovery of one whom he prized as a friend; not to speak of the obligations which he owed to the great lady who had recommended my brother to his care.

LXIII.

_Once more about the "Droghe d'Amore."--I leave my readers to decide upon the truth of my narration.--Final dissolution of Sacchi's company.--Sacchi leaves Venice for ever._

In this chapter I shall wind up the history of my comedy _Le Droghe d'Amore_, and relate the termination of my long connection with Sacchi's company of actors.

Sacchi, who had proceeded on his summer tour to Milan, thought fit to exhibit the notorious play in that city. Although it could not win the _succes de scandale_ which made it so profitable to his pocket at Venice, the performance gave rise to fresh prepossessions against Signor Gratarol.

News reached Venice that the actor Giovanni Vitalba, who played the too famous part of Don Adone, had been assaulted by a ruffian one night, going to or returning from the theatre. The fellow flung a huge bottle of ink full in his face, with the object of spoiling his beauty. Fortunately for Vitalba, the bottle, which was hurled with force enough to smash his skull, hit him on the thickly-wadded collar of his coat. To this circumstance he owed his escape from injury or death, designed by the abominable malice of some unknown ill-wisher.

The peaceable character of this poor comedian, who lived retired and economically, earning his bread upon the stage, and implicitly obeying Sacchi's orders, was so well known that no one suspected the hand of a private enemy. Suspicion fell not unnaturally upon Gratarol. For myself, I may say with candour that I did not lend my mind to the gossip which disturbed the town; but it is certain that this act of violence inflamed Gratarol's political adversaries, and made them remorseless when he applied for the ratification of his appointment to the embassy at Naples.[82]

On my brother's return to Venice, I begged him to speak as warmly as he could in Gratarol's behalf to the Procuratore Tron and his all-powerful lady. Everybody knew that Gratarol was expecting a decree of the Senate granting him some thousands of ducats for the expenses of his outfit; it was also asserted that, having received the usual allowance for an embassy to Turin, which he had not been able to employ upon that mission, his enemies intended to make this a reason for cancelling his appointment to Naples. I thought it therefore worth while to engage Gasparo's influence with that noble couple for the benefit of my would-be foe and rival in his present difficulty. What Gratarol may think about my intervention, it is impossible for me to imagine. Not improbably he will stigmatise it as an act of officious hypocrisy. Yet I am certain that it was sincerely and cordially meant to serve him.

My brother punctually discharged his mission, and returned with a verbal answer from the Procuratessa and her husband, to the effect that "insuperable obstacles lay in the way of sending the Secretary to the Court of Naples; Pietro Antonio Gratarol cannot and will not go; the best course for him to take is to send in his resignation." That was the ostensible pith of their reply; but the gist, if gist it was, lurked from sight in a cloud of political and economical considerations, anecdotes about Gratarol's ways of life and fortune, personalities, piques, private spites, and evidences of an unbecoming and vulgar will to trample on him. I do not intend to expose myself to the charge of evil intentions by setting down Mme. Dolfin Tron's malicious ultimatum in full here. I wrote it out, however, and have kept the memorandum among the papers locked up in my desk, whence I hope that no one will have the wish to drag it forth and read it.

Gratarol, at the close of these transactions, finding himself disfavoured by the Senate, did not take the prudent course of sending in his resignation and lying by for a better turn of affairs, such as is always to be looked for in a government like ours of Venice. On the contrary, he flung out with all the violence of his headstrong and indomitable temper. He left the country in a rage, exposing himself and his relatives to the thunderbolts which were hurled upon him, partly by the mechanical operation of our laws, but also by the force of a rapacious and inhuman tyranny.

_Illustrating the Italian Commedia dell'Arte, or Impromptu Comedy_]

I shall not enlarge upon what followed after Gratarol's flight to foreign lands. These circumstances, disastrous to himself and prejudicial to the enemies he left behind him, are only too fresh in the memory of men. But I may indulge in one philosopher's reflection. The man was said to be, in spite of his many profligacies and excesses, gifted with exuberant health and physical vigour. Considering his mental parts and moral qualities, it is a pity that he did not suffer from a tertian or a quartan fever, the headache, the colic, or peradventure piles. Handicapped in this salutary way, he might have continued to be a prosperous and able servant of the State. So true is it that men often find the faculty on which they most pride themselves their worst stumbling-block in life!

After Signer Gratarol's departure to the frozen North, I felt strongly inclined to have done, at once and for ever, with my lucubrations for the stage. Friends, however, pointed out that a sudden retirement from the pastime of many previous years would expose me to malignant comments. Accordingly, I completed two plays which I had already planned--_Il Metafisico_ and _Bianca Contessa di Melfi_--giving them to Sacchi in exchange for the autograph and all the copies of my now too notorious _Droghe d'Amore_. Those manuscripts I locked up in my escritoire, vowing that the comedy should never see the footlights of a theatre again.

It will not be impertinent, as I have touched upon these stage-affairs, to relate the dissolution of Sacchi's company in detail.

I had patronised my friends with heroico-comical perseverance for a quarter of a century. The time now came for me to part with them. Sacchi himself, aged in years, was falling rapidly to pieces. Absurd octogenarian love-affairs completed the ruin of his dotage. His daughter, who not unreasonably expected to inherit money, plate, and jewels of considerable value, never ceased inveighing against her father's anachronistic fondnesses. These invectives reached his ears, and exasperated a naturally irritable temper. Meanwhile, his partners in the company resented the despotism with which he claimed to rule the roost and use their common purse for benefactions to his mistresses. Detected in these private foibles, yet far from being taught the error of his ways, old Sacchi became a kind of demon. He never opened his lips without insulting his daughter, his partners, and the whole troupe. I do not expect my reader to imagine that their replies were sweetmeats. Discord ruled in every hall and chamber of this house of actors. It came to drawing swords and knives; and bloodshed was only obviated by the bodily intervention of bystanders.

I felt that the moment had come to take my leave. With this in view, I packed up a bundle of Spanish books lent to me by Sacchi and returned them. But things had gone too far to be remedied by hints and intimations. Petronio Zanerini, the best actor of Italy; Domenico Barsanti, a very able artist; Luigi Benedetti and his wife, both of them useful for all ordinary purposes; Agostino Fiorelli, stupendous in the role of Tartaglia; each and every one of these retired in disgust and took engagements with rival companies. Sacchi's eccentricities had reduced his troupe to a mere skeleton. Finally, the patrician who owned S. Salvatore, scenting disaster in the air, gave the lease of his theatre to another set of players.

I took certain steps at this juncture to keep what remained of the company together and to heal its breaches. Through my mediation Atanagio Zannoni, a splendid actor, an excellent fellow, and Sacchi's brother-in-law, consented to hold on upon the understanding that Sacchi should execute a deed according his partners their just share in the management. The document was drawn up and signed. Sacchi cursed and swore while signing; and Zannoni told me that it would prove waste paper, as indeed it did.

Patched up in this way, the company removed to the theatre of S. Angelo, which had been their old quarters before I succeeded in transferring them to S. Salvatore. They were scarce of money, scarce of actors, and the few actors they had were people of no talent. Two pieces I composed for them, _Cimene Pardo_ and _La Figlia dell'Aria_, could not be put upon the stage for want of funds and proper players to sustain the parts. I had eventually to give these dramas to two different companies. The history of one of them, _Cimene Pardo_, brings my old friend and gossip, Teodora Ricci, once more upon the scene; but I do not think that I should interest my readers by relating it.[83]

Suffice it to say, that everything went daily from bad to worse with Sacchi's troupe. He did not improve in temper. Receipts dwindled. The paid actors had to recover their salaries by suits at law, and left the company. Nothing was heard but outcries, lamentations, mutual reproaches, threats, complaints, demands for money, talks about executions, writs, and stamped papers from the courts. At last, after two years of this infernal squabbling, a troupe which had been the terror of its rivals and the delight of our theatres broke up in pitiable confusion.

Sacchi, on the point of setting out for Genoa, came to visit me, and spoke as follows, shedding tears thereby. I remember his precise words: "You are the only friend on whom I mean to call before I leave Venice secretly and with sorrow for ever. I shall never forget the benefits you have heaped upon me. You alone have told me the truth with candour. Do not deny me the favour of a kiss at parting, the favour of your pardon, and of your compassion."

I gave him the kiss he asked for. He left me weeping; and I--I am bound to say it--remained not less affected at the closing of this long and once so happy chapter in my life.[84]

After that moment I laid my pen down, and never again resumed it for dramatic composition.

LXIV.

_We cannot always go on laughing.--Deaths of friends.--Dissolution of the old Republic of S. Mark.--I lay my pen down on the 18th of March 1798._

As years advanced, it came to me, as it comes to all, to be reminded that we cannot go on always laughing. One Sunday I was hearing mass in the Church of S. Moise, when a friend came up and asked me in a whisper whether I had heard of the fatal accident to the patrician Paolo Balbi. "What accident?" I said with consternation. "Last night he died," was the reply. "What!" exclaimed I, still more terrified: "why, I was with him three hours yesterday evening; he was in perfect health and spirits." "Nevertheless," said my informant, "the poor gentleman is dead. Excuse me if I have been the bearer of disastrous news." When the mass, to which I listened without listening, was over, I ran to the patrician's house. I cherished warm affection for this friend of many years, and hoped against hope that the news might be false. Alas! the house resounded with funeral lamentations; the widow and children had already left it for the palace of their relatives, the Malipieri.

Not many days afterwards I received the sad announcement that my brother Francesco was seriously ill of a kind of cachexy on his estate in Friuli. A few days later I learned that he had breathed his last. The poor fellow left his wife and three sons well provided for; but when the salutary restraint of his authority was removed by death, they showed every inclination to dissipate what he had brought together for their comfort.

One morning my friend Raffaelle Todeschini was announced. His countenance wore an expression of alarm, while he began: "I come to bring you painful news. Last evening, in the coffee-house at the Ponte dell'Angelo, that honourable gentleman, Carlo Maffei, died suddenly." The blow fell heavy on my heart; for I have enjoyed few friendships equal to that of this most excellent gentleman. In his will he mentioned me in terms of the highest and most unmerited praise, bequeathing me his gold snuff-box by way of remembrance. That was the one and only legacy which fell to my share in the course of my whole life.

In a short period of time I lost successively several other relatives and friends. My brother Gasparo expired at Padua, recommending his second wife, the Mme. Cenet who had nursed him through his long illness, to my care. A sudden stroke of apoplexy robbed me of the first and faithfullest friend I ever had, Innocenzio Massimo. My sister Laura, who was married and lived at Adria, passed away while yet in the prime of womanhood. I could add other names to this funereal catalogue, if I were not unwilling to detain my readers longer in the graveyard.

Meanwhile, a terrible attack of fever laid me low in my turn. The physician, Giorgio Cornaro, a man of the highest probity and candour, who showed a vigilant affection for his patients, came at once to visit me. The intense pains I suffered during the following night, and the excessive fierceness with which the fever renewed its assaults, made me feel that I was about to follow my relatives and friends to the tomb. I waited through those sombre hours; but when I heard my servant stirring, I sent him for a confessor. The man refused at first, and had to be dispatched upon his errand by a voice more worthy of a cut-throat than a penitent. While I was confessing, Dr. Cornaro entered. He inquired what I had been about, and I replied that I did not think it amiss to be prepared beforehand. "I felt sufficiently ill to fulfil the duties of a Catholic upon his death-bed, and have saved you the trouble of breaking the news to me in case of necessity." "Very well," said he, feeling my pulse and frowning. "We must cut short this fever with quinine, before it reaches the third assault. It is a violent attack of the sort we call pernicious." How many pounds of the drug I swallowed is unknown to me. I only remember that they brought me a large glassful every two hours. The fever abated; but I had to drag through three months of a slow and painful convalescence.

But now it is time to close these Memoirs. The publisher, Palese, informs me that the third volume will be more than large enough. I lay my pen aside just at the moment when I should have had to describe that vast undulation called the French Revolution, which swept over Europe, upsetting kingdoms and drowning the landmarks of immemorial history. This awful typhoon caught Venice in its gyration, affording a splendidly hideous field for philosophical reflection. "Splendidly hideous" is a contradiction in terms; but at the period in which we are living paradoxes have become classical.

The sweet delusive dream of a democracy, organised and based on irremovable foundations--the expectation of a moral impossibility--made men howl and laugh and dance and weep together. The ululations of the dreamers, yelling out _Liberty_, _Equality_, _Fraternity_, deafened our ears; and those of us who still remained awake were forced to feign themselves dreamers, in order to protect their honour, their property, their lives. People who are not accustomed to trace the inevitable effects of doctrines propagated through the centuries see only mysteries and prodigies in convulsions of this kind. The whole tenor of my writings, on the other hand, and particularly my poem _Marfisa bizzarra_, which conceals philosophy beneath the mantle of burlesque humour, prove that I was keenly alive to the disastrous results which had to be expected from revolutionary science sown broadcast during the past age. I always dreaded and predicted a cataclysm as the natural consequence of those pernicious doctrines. Yet my Cassandra warnings were doomed to remain as useless as these Memoirs will certainly be--as ineffectual as a doctor's prescriptions for a man whose lungs are rotten. The sweet delusive dream of our physically impossible democracy will end in the evolution of....

But Palese calls on me to staunch this flow of ink upon the paper. Let us leave to serious and candid historians the task of relating what we are sure, if we live, to see.

To-day is the 18th of March in the year 1798; and here I lay my pen down, lest I injure my good publisher. Farewell, patient and benign readers of my useless Memoirs!

LXV.

SEQUEL TO GOZZI'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY.

SUPPLIED BY THE TRANSLATOR.

Gozzi broke off his Memoirs on the 18th of March 1798. He lived another eight years, and died upon the 4th of April 1806, aged eighty-six. On reviewing his life, we find four clearly marked periods. The first ends with the death of his father in 1745, and includes his three years' service in Dalmatia. The second closes with the year 1756, and is marked by the break-up of the Gozzi family and his engagement in those litigations and affairs of business which formed his real occupation for a long series of years. Short as was this second period, it gave a decisive tone to his character by confirming the man's natural obstinacy and litigiousness. Undoubtedly it was not for nothing that he frequented the Venetian law-courts and studied the arts of chicanery. In all his polemical writings we detect the habit of forensic warfare, the wariness of an experienced pleader, and the licensed plausibility of one who is accustomed to conceal the weak points in his own case while magnifying the shortcomings of his adversary. His unremitting attention to practical matters made him an experienced man of business. This was the true Carlo Gozzi; not that fantastic dreamy plaything of the sprites and fairies which his romantic French and German critics have discerned in the author of the _Fiabe_. At the same time, during this second period, he never neglected literature, but went on writing in the intervals of serious affairs. Self-taught, well-nigh devoid of systematic culture in history, philosophy, and language, but gifted with a sincere admiration for the best Italian authors, with an active fancy and a natural bias for burlesque humour, he formed that peculiar manner, at once prolix and forcible, effective and slovenly, which distinguishes his published works. Unequal in style, incorrect in diction, incapable of giving perfect form or polish to his compositions, he nevertheless posed as a purist and threw himself with passion as a conservative into the literary polemics of his day. The Accademia Granellesca, founded at the close of this period, recognised in him its stoutest champion and most quarrelsome fore-fighter. I have mentioned the year 1756 as the date which opens the third period in Gozzi's life. It marks the publication of his _Tartana degli Influssi_ and the return of Sacchi's company to Venice. This period terminates in 1781, and includes all that was most memorable in his career--the quarrel with Goldoni and Chiari, the alliance with Sacchi, the composition of the _Fiabe_ and twenty-three plays on Spanish subjects, the liaison with Teodora Ricci, and the episode of Gratarol. Gozzi was past sixty when Sacchi's company broke up, and Gratarol's misfortunes threw a gloomy light upon his past theatrical career. The fourth period of seventeen years is distinguished by little literary activity. Yet we owe to it the _Memorie Inutili_, which were professedly written as an answer to Gratarol's _Narrazione Apologetica_. Partly composed in 1780, but suppressed by order of the Government, they did not see the light until the year 1797-98, when Gozzi completed the work and sent it in a hurry to the press. Meanwhile the Republic of S. Mark had fallen, never to rise again. In the midst of this political earthquake, Gozzi retained his old aristocratic principles intact, though he bowed to custom and used the shibboleths of the French Revolution, as he confesses, with conscious cynicism.[85] The period of old age was passed in comparative solitude, cheered, however, by the friendly relations which he maintained with the surviving members of his family. The cycle of his dramatic works was closed; and after 1782 he had the mortification of seeing his _Fiabe_ neglected, while Goldoni's star reascended the firmament of popularity and fame. Indeed, the _Fiabe_ had no chance of surviving the improvised style of comedy, to support which Gozzi composed them, and which he fondly imagined immortal. Goethe, in 1788, was present at a performance given by the last debris of Sacchi's company; but when the old _Commedia dell'Arte_ and the old actors died out, the _Fiabe_ were relegated to marionettes and puppet-shows. The poet and the man of letters dwindled in Gozzi, but the man of business survived. His correspondence during this fourth period shows him engaged in various commercial affairs upon a small scale, minute in his accounts, involved in litigation, attentive to the produce of his farms, busied about the interests of friends, trafficking in lace and stuffs, groceries, wine, fowls, and carriages.[86] This forms a curious contrast to the romantic portrait of the old man vamped up for us by Paul de Musset. The ordinary troubles of advanced age--rheums, aches, and infirmities--fell upon him. In one of his letters to Innocenzio Massimo he describes their correspondence as "a hypochondriacal gazette." On the 13th of February 1804 he signed a holographic will, which shows him still loyal to his conservative creed in religion, politics, philosophy, and morals. At this time he appears to have been living in the Campo S. Angelo, one of the broadest, busiest, and sunniest squares of Venice. Indeed, he had quitted the ancestral palace of the Gozzi at S. Cassiano many years before, finding it too distant from the theatres and the piazza. For a long while he occupied a casino alone in the Calle Lunga S. Moise. The little dwelling belonged to him; and in a passage of his Memoirs, which did not lend itself to the scheme of my translation, he relates the circumstances of his removal to this habitation.[87] I shall insert it here, because it throws light upon the last stage of Gozzi's journey in this world. "Many years," he says, "had passed away since my brothers Francesco and Almoro with their families were established in Friuli, while I remained at Venice, the sole occupant of our paternal mansion. For me alone, the vast place was like a wilderness. In the winter I shivered with cold there. Snow, rain, and the Rialto caused me innumerable annoyances when I left the theatres at night to gain my distant home. I was growing old, and this made the journey seem each year more irksome. A casino which I owned in the quarter of S. Maria Zobenigo, Calle Lunga S. Moise, not far from S. Marco, had been let for sixty ducats a year to the majordomo of a Venetian nobleman. This man left Venice with his master on an embassy, giving me no notice that he had sold his furniture and handed over my casino to the mistress of some man about the town. By a series of similar changes, the tenement passed successively through the hands of several women of the same sort. I always got the rent and asked no questions. The best of it was that the money was punctually paid me by priests, who uttered panegyrics on the heroism of my female tenants. The last of these heroines sent to tell me that my house needed certain repairs. Accordingly I went there, and was received by a well-restored relic of womanhood, who pointed out the alterations she judged necessary in her dwelling-place. Casting my eyes over the lodgings, I thought that they would serve my purpose admirably, and told the lady so. In a moment she changed her honeyed tone and language of affected flattery to oaths and threats and declarations that nothing in the world would make her turn out. I phlegmatically remarked that she had no lease, that my lessee had no power to sublet, and that I would grant her sufficient time to seek another nest. In such matters, as is well known to readers of these Memoirs, I have always had some trouble. But at last, by taking over certain pieces of damaged furniture, I came to terms with the Nymph of Cocytus, and installed myself in my casino. I did it up, and stayed there fourteen years, letting on lease my former abode at S. Cassiano. I should have been there still, had not my brother Almoro written to say that he was tired of Friuli. A widower, with a son and daughter, he should like to send the former to the university at Padua, and to make a home with me in Venice. I was always ready to oblige my brother, and this casino could not hold us all. Accordingly, we took a larger house at S. Benedetto; and here my brother, much aged in my eyes, as I must probably have seemed in his, came to live with me. His children, whom I had only known as little creatures, had grown into giants. Before a year was over, the daughter made a good match in Friuli, and the son went to Padua, whence the troubles of the Revolution drove him away before he had obtained the laurels of a doctor's degree. In that commotion the laurel, destined for the brows of students, was consecrated to the kitchen and the garnishing of dishes on the table."[88]

It is possible that the marriage of this niece and the subsequent marriage of his nephew broke up the joint-household at S. Benedetto, and that Gozzi then removed to the neighbouring quarter of S. Angelo.[89] Almoro and his son Gasparo were appointed executors to Carlo Gozzi's will, which winds up with the following characteristic admonition to the young man: "Preserve your affection for your well-bred, well-behaved, and excellent wife. Look to the careful education of your children, and protect them from the false maxims of that sophistic science which is the bane of our age, involving all humanity in disastrous mists of error and confusion, in labyrinths of infelicity and misery." Gozzi died on the 4th of April 1806, and was buried in the church of S. Cassiano.

PIETRO LONGHI,

THE PAINTER OF VENETIAN SOCIETY DURING THE PERIOD OF GOZZI AND GOLDONI.[90]

I.

The eighteenth century was marked in Venice by a partial revival of the art of painting. Four contemporary masters--Tiepolo, Canaletti, Longhi, and Guardi--have left abundance of meritorious work, which illustrates the taste and manners of society, shows how men and women dressed and moved and took their pastime in the City of the Waters, and preserves for us the external features of Venice during the last hundred years of the Republic.[91]

As an artist, Tiepolo was undoubtedly the strongest of these four. In him alone we recognise a genius of the first order, who, had he been born in the great age of Italian painting, might have disputed the palm with men like Tintoretto. His frescoes in the Palazzo Labia, representing the embarkation of Antony and Cleopatra on the Cydnus, and their famous banquet at Canopus, are worthy to be classed with the finest decorative work of Paolo Veronese. Indeed, the sense for colour, the robust breadth of design, and the firm, unerring execution, which distinguish that great master, seem to have passed into Tiepolo, who revives the splendours of the sixteenth century in these superbly painted pageants. It is to be regretted that one so eminently gifted should have condescended to the barocco taste of the age in those many allegories and celestial triumphs which he executed upon the ceilings of palaces and the cupolas of churches. Little, except the frescoes of the Labia reception-hall, survives to show what Tiepolo might have achieved had he remained true to his native instinct for heroic subjects and for masculine sobriety of workmanship.

Of Canaletti it is not necessary to say much. The fame which he erewhile enjoyed in England has been obscured of late years--to some extent, perhaps by the fussy eloquence of Mr. Ruskin, but really by the finer sense for landscape and the truer way of rendering nature which have sprung up in Europe. Canaletti's pictures of Venetian buildings and canals strike us as cold, tame, and mechanical, accustomed as we are to the magic of Turner's palette and the penetrative force of his imagination.

Guardi, the pupil and in some respects the imitator of Canaletti, has met with a different fate. Less prized during the heyday of his master's fame, he has been steadily acquiring reputation on account of certain qualities peculiar to himself. His draughtsmanship displays an agreeable sketchiness; his colouring a graceful gemmy brightness and a glow of sunny gold. But what has mainly served to win for Guardi popularity is the attention he paid to contemporary costume and manners. Canaletti filled large canvasses with mathematical perspectives of city and water. At the same time he omitted life and incident. There is little to remind us that the Venice he so laboriously depicted was the Venice of perukes and bag-wigs, of masks and hoops and Carnival disguises. Guardi had an eye for local colour and for fashionable humours. The result is that some of his small pictures--one, for instance, which represents a brilliant reception in the Sala del Collegio of the Ducal Palace--have a real value for us by recalling the life of a vanished and irrecoverable past. Thus Guardi illustrates the truth that artists may acquire posthumous importance by felicitous accident in their choice of subjects or the bias of their sympathies. We would willingly exchange a dozen so-called "historical pictures" for one fresh and vivid scene which brings a bygone phase of civilisation before our eyes.[92]

In this particular respect Longhi surpasses Guardi, and deserves to be styled the pictorial chronicler of Venetian society in the eighteenth century. He has even been called the Venetian Hogarth and the Venetian Boucher. Neither of these titles, however, as I shall attempt to demonstrate, rightly characterise his specific quality. Could his numerous works be collected in one place, or be adequately reproduced, we should possess a complete epitome of Venetian life and manners in the age which developed Goldoni and Casanova, Carlo Gozzi and Caterina Dolfin-Tron.

II.

Very little is known of Longhi's career, and that little has no great importance. He was the son of a goldsmith, born at Venice in 1702, and brought up to his father's trade. While yet a lad, Pietro showed unusual powers of invention and elegance of drawing in the designs he made for ornamental silver-work. This induced his parents to let him study painting. His early training in the goldsmith's trade, however, seems to have left an indelible mark on Longhi's genius. A love of delicate line remained with him, and he displayed an affectionate partiality for the minutest details of decorative furniture, dress, and articles of luxury. Some of his drawings of plate--coffee-pots, chocolate-mills, ewers, salvers, water-vessels--are exquisite for their instinctive sense of graceful curve and unerring precision of contour. It was a period, as we know, during which such things acquired an almost flawless purity of outline; and Longhi felt them with the enthusiasm of a practised artisan.