The Memoirs of Count Carlo Gozzi Volume II Part 16

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 a.s.sist him in his pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sing 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 b.u.t.ter." And so it was. The b.u.t.ter 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 quant.i.ties of stronger food, and swallowed moderate doses of quinine. Then arrived a terrible crisis. His whole alimentary ca.n.a.l, from the sophagus to the r.e.c.t.u.m, 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 appet.i.te, 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 circ.u.mstances.

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 a.s.saulted 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 circ.u.mstance 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 emba.s.sy 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 a.s.serted that, having received the usual allowance for an emba.s.sy 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 n.o.ble 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LEANDRE

_Ill.u.s.trating the Italian Commedia dell'Arte, or Impromptu Comedy_]

I shall not enlarge upon what followed after Gratarol's flight to foreign lands. These circ.u.mstances, 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 ma.n.u.scripts 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 doc.u.ment 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 compa.s.sion."

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 ma.s.s 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 ma.s.s, 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 friends.h.i.+ps 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 Ma.s.simo. My sister Laura, who was married and lived at Adria, pa.s.sed 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 a.s.saults, 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 a.s.sault. 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 gla.s.sful 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 cla.s.sical.

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 Ca.s.sandra 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.