Volume I Part 15 (1/2)

For my own use I chose out a little room at the top of the house, where I set up a rickety table, provided e inkstand and plenty of pens and paper, and spent at least six hours a day in reading and scribbling poetic nonsense This was ht to add that I devoted so types of character and listening to conversation; nor did I neglect our theatres, where I saw the various tragedies and coiven several serious pieces to the stage

They pleased the public then; and though they may be out of fashi+on now, they would not fail to please e my old opinions

I had mixed with all sorts of enerals, adreat lords, officers, soldiers, the people of Illyrian cities, the Morlacchi of the villages, Mainotti, Pastrovicchi, convicts, galley-slaves It was tiht, to beco a set of iani[131] My companions of this kind were chiefly shopkeepers and handicrafts 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 co 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 ether on the Giudecca, at Ca islands My share of the expense on these occasions was not ood-will ofsome slices of excellent Friulian ham to our cohtedto 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 iani 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 ues, scheovernment So and going on secret conferences with my sister-in-law These attracted itations It grieved me to see my brother Gasparo iiving the least thought to dorieved in silence There was one circumstance, however, which fairly put me out of patience We had three sisters in the house; and a swar fellows of the freestround them When I came home and found these visitors at their accustomed chatter, I used to scowl at theain, turn my back, and climb the stairs to entlemen perceive how little their company attracted me This manuvre had its effect My sister-in-law took it upon her to readfriends of the fah ways I replied that I knew very hat friendshi+p was, but that I could distinguish the false fro been rude to anybody; s which seeular, a mere lad's opinions were not worthy of consideration This hint of ard me like a serpent Even my three sisters, who loved me sincerely, and were excellent creatures, iious principles, could not help harbouring a trifle of suspicion in their feht 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 toto 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 sies of ed for their settleentailed property with sos 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 randfather's fine estate had passed into the hands of women under two adularities 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 thatabroad together in thethe five winter s 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 tothe two ladies left the house together, no longerthe _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 conditionwas advancing, he wished to go into Friuli withour sister-in-law at the head of affairs in Venice; meanwhile the treasury was e left in theed my shoulders, and kept silence

A few days afterwards, while I was atte to drive away care by study in my little upper cha, and my first fear was lestht me to interpose between the fa 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 ancestralof his own in the distant quarter of San Jacopo dall' Orio

They added that ain, and my brothers Gasparo and Almor would offer no opposition I felt deeply irls as well as by my own keen sense of hu the strictest secrecy upon reeableness, and misery of all kinds see want of money, the contract verbally completed by my mother and sister-in-law, my father's consent, the adhesion of ation 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 ratify my father's desire for the country, and to put a stop to this hu contract With that object in view I also undertook a secret nor Francesco Zini

I laidpoliteness, 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 nu with their scanty bundles frorief and shahbours, ould be exclaientlefolk upon the move, because their home has been sold over their heads!” I proved to hiain an odious and ugly reputation Finally, I besought him, as aa bargain which, happily for his advantage and our own, had not been ratified

Over the fat, red, snor Zini spread a out his blood, not water, to obtain the house; ether 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 fron the contract, thus giving it validity, and securing the rightful interest of the innocent purchaser The affair had been settled, the necessary deeds aiting on the bureau of Marchese Suarez, his advocate Most assuredly, unless my father's ive validity to the contract in perpetuity, he would not unbutton his pockets to disburse a penny; he was not a fool, to be ientleman's perspicacity and caution; repeated that I had no intention of procuringon earth would force ed hiain; and wound up by i 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 hie to hie scarlet jowl and lifting his night-cap, with so ht to have been put upon uard 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 la was said by me about the course which I had followed, even to my three sisters I reflected that they o to Signor Zini's humanity

Meanwhile I ruminated how to procure my father's removal to the country, and how to help the fa for the harvest, which would be finished in three months I computed the value of my clothes, my watch,I possessed But these calculations only reduced nor Massimo, then at Padua I remembered that I already owed hi on an allowance from his father Yet I knew that both father and son, as well as a brother of enerous toward persons on whose character for loyalty and friendshi+p they relied, than they were suspicious of intriguers and impostors I was also aware that they were in a position to renderthe tempestuous vicissitudes of my existence, have I not had the opportunity to verify this fact!

While thus engaged in studying ways and nor Zini broke rudely in upon myfor his own, he divulged the secret of my visit, and exposed what I had said to hi My belief is that his communication a felloho had coht to reason, and con the contract, he refused to disburse two shi+llings

I was inwith , whenof philosophical severity in her toilette, so in her manner, which concealed, however, an internal irritation, proclairavity of her mission She addressed herself pointedly to an a long narration of the straits to which ere 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 ht about this special providence

At the bottonor Zini's act of treason, and saw that I was lost However, I answered respectfully that a contract of this kind struckbut providential; still ht fit, without rendering an account of his actions to his sons She fla 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 contentedthat I was ready to shed my blood for my father, but that I could not assent to a contract so hu and ruinous, the last of a whole series dictated by suicidal policy People who understood econo provision for the future, not of selling ortheir property to ance 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 hoere 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 saht to be let, and not sold Still ht; only I did not believe hiainst estures of submission, respect, and supplication hich I accoency of its significance My mother rose, with her arms akimbo, and inquired who it was Ithe bitter and irrefutable truth, I said that I only blamed fate and the misfortunes themselves ”I reckon,” she replied with a sive in your adhesion” ”Indeed I shall not,” was my answer; and the profound bohich I spoke these words had the appearance of ih God knows I did not h to fan the smothered flames into a Vesuvius in eruption