The Memoirs of Count Carlo Gozzi Volume I Part 16

The sequel of this history will show that his reasoning, though plausible enough, was faulty, and that the policy he recommended led to further complications. Gasparo and Almor had already signed; Francesco was prepared to follow suit; I did not care to take the odium of standing out alone. Accordingly, four signatures were generously appended to the ma.s.s of undecipherable hieroglyphics, without any attempt on our part to examine the accounts, which by this act we formally accepted.

Francesco set off for Friuli, after promising to maintain a detailed correspondence with Gasparo on the state and management of our farms there, and not to let himself be wheedled out of money or produce at the demand of every one and anybody. I did not then know what a worthless coadjutor I had summoned to support my policy. Without the least intention to defraud, he was governed by an insect's blind instinct for his own particular advantage. Under a compliant exterior, he concealed the subtlety of a diplomatist. His sole aim was to temporise and make concessions, with the view of bringing matters to a rupture and of obtaining his own share in the division of our common patrimony. This end he pursued in secrecy and silence, without reflecting on his duties to the family, or the position of our three unmarried sisters, and the discords which his pursuit of self-interest was bound to foment.

What followed after his departure for Friuli seemed conclusively to prove that a plan had been laid to drive him to the Levant and me to Dalmatia by involving us in embarra.s.sments of all sorts. I accuse n.o.body; the heated pa.s.sions which raged round us, and the injuries from which I suffered, deserve compa.s.sion more than blame.

Scarcely a day pa.s.sed without letters being sent from Venice, begging my brother to dispatch provisions or money on various pretences. He complied with every application, whether it bore the name of Gasparo or of my mother or my sister-in-law. In the course of some seven months he had exhausted the whole harvest of that year, without asking for accounts or disputing the claims made upon the property he managed. In like manner the profits of certain houses in Venice, and of some farms at Bergamo and Vicenza, amounting to 800 ducats, had been dissipated.

When letters still kept coming, demanding supplies and setting forth our urgent needs, my brother could only answer that there was nothing left to send. It was vain to inquire how the casks of wine and sacks of corn and bags of cash had vanished. Everybody had taken something to defray his own particular expenses. One said, "I got only so much;" another, "I got so much; I did this, and I did that." Gasparo knew less than anybody how matters had been managed, and had kept no account of the least article. The conclusion arrived at was that we must all die of hunger unless we sold some piece of the estate upon our joint lives.

"Ora incomencian le dolenti note."

"And now begins the Iliad of our woes."

XXI.

_My att.i.tude of patient calm is useless.--Volcanic eruptions, machinations, tragi-comic civil wars within our household._

At this point I resolved to step forth boldly and to take the whole weight of our affairs upon my shoulders, without troubling my head about being called a tyrant and disturber of domestic peace. I proclaimed aloud that the family must retire for some time into the country and economise. Nothing would induce me to consent to sales or mortgages.

Then I began to contract debts on my own account, and to part with my personal trifles for the support of the household. I soon saw that it was impossible in this way to keep fifteen people, servants included, at Venice. Whenever I insisted upon the necessity of leaving for the country, all the women rose in revolt, and turned their backs without a word of answer. Our dining-table became the scene of daily quarrels, sullen faces, surly glances, biting speeches. I was deeply grieved to observe that a final division of the estate was drawing nearer and nearer. To avert this catastrophe seemed impracticable, and I reflected gloomily upon the condition to which my brother Gasparo would be reduced, with a wife and five children to support upon the fourth part of our enc.u.mbered property. Meanwhile I could not blame him except for his incurable indolence and absolute immersion in studies for which I shared his weakness.

Among the habitues of the house, none of them friends of mine, were certain lawyers. I noticed that these gentlemen had frequent conferences with the ladies of the family who ruled my brother. They were clearly plotting against me, and seeking means to set the machinery of the law in movement in order to hamper my free action. There was also a lady to whom the female members of my family paid visits every evening. She was the Countess Elisabetta Gh.e.l.lini of Vicenza, widow of the patrician Barbarigo Balbi, who died some years before this epoch, leaving her the mother of an only son. It is exceedingly rare to find a lady endowed with the excellent qualities of heart and head which she possessed in a supreme degree. About forty years of age, infirm of health, and exposed to constant litigation through various claims advanced against her moderate estates, she bore the trials of life with steady courage and constant trust in Heaven. Her chief interest was the education of her son, a boy of eight or nine, for whom she had provided masters, while she herself instilled into his mind the principles of sound religion and morality. Gifted with a lively intellect, and fond of literature, she spent a large part of the day in reading poetry, and opened her house to a society composed mainly of persons who had suffered in the battles of life. Her extreme sympathy for the afflicted led her to despoil herself with admirable intrepidity, and to bestow on others what was needed for her own support. This compa.s.sionate and pious lady had for her adviser and advocate in the numerous lawsuits to which she was condemned, the celebrated Conte Francesco Santorini.

It will appear from the sequel that this digression upon the Countess Gh.e.l.lini was needed to explain an important pa.s.sage in my life. Amid the din and squabbles of our home, I used at times to catch fragments of the panegyrics poured forth by my female relatives and Gasparo upon this lady, and heard them rehea.r.s.e the sonnets which they intended to recite in her honour, or to offer for her recreation. Such was the common custom at that period, observed by poets in the houses they frequented.

I speedily divined that a plot was in process of formation to secure the a.s.sistance of a very famous advocate against me. Trusting this intuition, I resolved to introduce myself, although I had received no invitation, to the lady whom my enemies so warmly praised.

She received me, and asked who I might be. On giving my name, the n.o.ble and yet kindly distance of her manner changed suddenly to sternness. A few phrases which I thought it right to utter about her interest in my relatives increased this expression of reserve; and she began to speak as follows, with the happy choice of words which was peculiar to her: "Sir, I am a poor woman as regards the wealth of this life, but by the grace of G.o.d I am rich in the possession of good sentiments and a sound education. Your family is cultivated, and deserves to meet with kindly feeling and esteem from all the world. It is a pity that such a family should be annoyed and brought to sorrow by a certain individual bound to it by ties of blood, duty, and respect. A mother of very n.o.ble birth treated with contempt, sisters domineered over, persons of merit regarded with hatred--all kinds of extravagances and injustice--such things dishonour the individual of whom I speak." This preamble made me feel inclined to bow myself out of the room in silence, since I am by nature far from p.r.o.ne to justify my innocence; but politeness and a fear that a certain famous advocate, if prejudiced against me, might upset my plans, kept me where I was. I suffered, however, keenly from the barbarous picture which had been presented to me, and began to plead in self-defence. She interrupted me by saying that she did not believe me to be entirely bad-hearted, and that if I ceased to follow the counsels of a certain friend of mine, I might become a rational and right-feeling young man. So then, here was Signor Ma.s.simo once more made a scape-goat--the friend who had a.s.sisted me in Dalmatia, succoured my family in our distress, and who still remained our uncomplaining creditor. The impropriety of this attack stung me so sharply that I could not hold my tongue. I had been treated as a knave and fool without losing patience; but never in my life have I heard my friends insulted without resenting the injustice.

I told the lady, knitting my brows and speaking seriously, that she was bound to listen to me: unless, as I thought not, she was indifferent to equity. Prejudice, I said, is a very unjust judge, and I did not wish her to fall into that category. Then I entered into a candid narration of our family affairs. I described the ill results of reckless mal-administration. I related what had already happened and was sure to happen, what I wanted, how I was opposed, my honourable intentions, the plots and schemes to thwart me, the services rendered by my friend and his guiltlessness of any machinations. I could see that she was both surprised and penetrated by my reasoning. Just at this point Conte Francesco Santorini entered the apartment, tired and drowsy. We exchanged greetings, and the lady spoke to him in this way: "Count, you were quite right to doubt about the Gozzi. This gentleman has put a very different face upon the matter, and I know not what to think." The Count sank sleepily into a chair, murmuring: "Did I not tell you that you ought to hear both sides? The chatter of women, heated brains" ... And having said these words, he subsided into slumber.

I begged this n.o.ble lady to continue her protection to our family, and to receive the visits which I hoped to pay her; if she sought to help us, she could do so by allaying the fever which was burning in so many irritated bosoms. For my part, I cultivated her friendship through many long years, until death forced me to deplore the loss of one whom I esteemed and reverenced. My relatives, on the other hand, gradually relaxed in their attentions, ceased to visit her, and changed their eulogistic sonnets into petty satires.

XXII.

_The dogs of the law are let loose on me by my family.--It is impossible to avoid a separation._

As time went on, my steady intention to remove our family into the country, and my other plans of reform, roused my domestic antagonists to various pettifogging stratagems. The black-robed seedy myrmidons of the courts began to haunt our dwelling, taking inventories of every nail on the pretext of my mother's dowry, delivering demands in form from my three sisters for maintenance and marriage portions, presenting bills for drapery and jewels furnished by a company of merchants to the tune of 1500 ducats, and suing on the part of my two brothers-in-law for some 4000 ducats owed to them. Little creditors of all descriptions rose in swarms around us; and what was still more astounding, my sister-in-law advanced a claim of 900 ducats, due to her, she said, upon the statement of accounts which we had signed so negligently. One would have thought the myrmidons and ban-dogs of the law had been unleashed by hunters bent on driving a wild beast from his lair; while the satisfaction and triumph depicted on the faces of my relatives showed too clearly who were the real authors of this legal persecution.

I bore the brunt of these attacks with my habitual philosophy of laughter, drew closer to my brother Almor, and informed Frances...o...b.. letter of what was being conspired against us. Count Francesco Santorini helped me at this pinch with excellent advice. Under his direction I took the following measures. Francesco received instructions to hold fast by every rood of our Friulian property, and to send me copies of any writs which might be served upon him there. I recognised my mother's dowry, and offered annual payments to the merchants and my brothers-in-law. To my sisters I replied in writing that their maintenance should be duly attended to, but that it was impossible to create marriage portions for them under the conditions of entail to which the estate was subjected. With regard to the monstrous claims advanced by my sister-in-law, I flatly denied their validity until they had been submitted to a court of justice. Then I proceeded to meet the current expenditure of our establishment as well as I was able, while waiting for the time of harvest; and all this I did without mooting the question of Gasparo's separation from our brotherhood, in the hope that little by little things would settle down in peace and quietness. Vain and idle expectation! My reforms, by cutting at the root of vested interests, and checking the arbitrary sway of Heaven knows whom, merely fanned the flames of rage which burned against me. In a private memorial, addressed to my mother, brother, sister-in-law, and sisters, I finally explained the impossibility of supporting the family any longer at Venice, exposed as I was to annoying and expensive litigation with the very persons who ate and drank at the same table. I might just as well have talked to images. Writs issued by my mother, my sister-in-law, my sisters, fell in showers. Slights and insults thickened daily. Our common table had become a pit of h.e.l.l, worthy to be sung by Dante. To such a state of misery had irrational dissensions brought a set of relatives who really loved each other.

In order to shelter Almor and myself from the wordy missiles which fell like hail all dinner-time, I had a little table laid for us two in a separate apartment. The covers were removed with rudeness, on the pretext that the linen, plates, dishes, &c., belonged to my mother's dowry, and that if I wanted such furniture I must buy it. Pushed in this way to extremities, I decided to leave a house which had become for me a h.e.l.l on earth. Perhaps it was impolitic to take this step. But I could not stand these petty persecutions longer. Before quitting the infernal regions, I begged permission from my mother to take away the beds in which my brother Almor and I enjoyed our troubled slumbers, offering to pay their price to the credit of her dowry. She replied with a sardonic smile of discontent that she could not grant my request, since the beds were needed by the family. I accepted this refusal with hilarity.

"E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle."

"And thence we issued to review the stars."

XXIII.

_Calumnious reports, negotiations, a legal part.i.tion of our family estate, tranquillity sought in vain._

I had hardly settled down with my brother Almor in the remote quarter of S. Caterina, where lodgings are cheap in proportion to their inconvenience and discomfort, before the whole town began to talk about our doings. Three of the brothers Gozzi, it was rumoured, had laid violent hands upon the family estate; their eldest brother with his wife and five children, their three unmarried sisters, and their mother, a Venetian n.o.blewoman worthy of all respect, had been plunged in tears and indigence by the barbarous inhumanity of these unnatural monsters. The hovel I had hired, and where I suffocated with Almor in the smoke of a miserable kitchen, ill-furnished and waited on by an old beldame called Jacopa, was besieged by the myrmidons of the law. Everything was done to dislodge me from the city, and to make me abandon the line of action on which I had resolved. Democritus and my innocence came to my aid; and I determined to stand firm with silent and pa.s.sive resistance.

In these painful circ.u.mstances I heard to my great sorrow that my brother's wife had persuaded him to become the lessee of the theatre of S. Angelo at Venice.[136] Her romantic turn of fancy, together with her love of domination, made her conceive wild hopes of profit from this scheme. A company of actors were engaged at fixed salaries; and she was to play the part of controller, purse-holder, and stage-manager for the troupe at Venice and on the mainland. Moved by pity for my brother and his innocent children, I did everything I could, without appearing personally in the matter, to dissuade this hot-headed woman from so perilous an enterprise. She repelled all such attempts with scorn, being firmly convinced that she would gain a fortune and make her brothers-in-law bite their nails with envy.

I saw that the division of our patrimony could no longer be postponed, and civilly intimated to Gasparo that the time was come for taking this supreme step. Articles were accordingly drawn up, whereby the several parcels of our estate in Friuli, Venice, Bergamo, and Vicenza were part.i.tioned into four lots. Provision was made for the repayment of my mother's dowry and for the proper maintenance of my three sisters, all of whom elected to reside with Gasparo. A fund was formed for the liquidation of debts, the charge of which devolved on me. I undertook to render an annual report of this operation, showing how I had bestowed the monies in my hands as trustee for the family. Nothing was fixed about my sister-in-law's claims for reimburs.e.m.e.nt; but it will be seen that when her theatrical speculation proved a ruinous failure, I had to take these also into account. Gasparo expressed a wish to obtain the upper dwelling in our mansion as part of his share. The lower dwelling was conceded to Francesco, Almor and myself. To my mother and sisters we offered the hospitality of sons and brothers, in case at any time they should repent of their decision to abide with Gasparo.

It might be imagined that, while these negotiations were in progress, I had no time to spend on literary occupations. Nothing could be further from the fact. I found in them my solace and distraction, pouring forth mult.i.tudes of compositions, for the most part humorous and alien to the cares which weighed upon my mind. The course of my Memoirs will bring to light many curious incidents which these literary pastimes occasioned, and the narration of which will prove, I hope, far from saddening to my readers.

XXIV.

_I enter on a period of toilsome litigation, and become acquainted with Venetian lawyers._

I should have been an arrant fool had I flattered myself with the hope that this part.i.tion would introduce the olive-branch of peace into our midst. On the contrary, I looked forward, and with justice, to all kinds of coming troubles. Two-thirds of the estate were saved from extravagant administration by the process; but the minds of Gasparo's family had been almost incurably embittered by the same cause. When I wanted to lay my hands upon our doc.u.ments, in order to study the nature of various entails and trusts under which the estates were settled, I found that all these papers had been sold out of spite. Who had done this I did not learn, but I was informed in great secrecy by a servant-maid that they had been sold to a certain pork-butcher. I repaired immediately to his shop, and was only just in time to repurchase some abstracts and wills, which had not yet been used to wrap up sausages. Then I set to work in the cabinets of notaries and advocates and in the public archives, following the scent afforded by my recovered papers. More than eighty bulky suits in my own handwriting remain to show how patiently I studied the rights and claims of our estate, and now I prepared myself for the task of laying these before the courts.

At this epoch I made acquaintance with the celebrated pleader, Antonio Testa, under whose direction and advice I embarked upon a series of litigations which kept me fully occupied for eighteen years, and in the course of which I became acquainted with the men who haunt our palace of justice, and learned the chicaneries of legal warfare. Inveterate abuses, introduced in the remote past, and complicated by the ingenuity of lawyers through successive generations (most of them men of subtle brains, some of them devoid of moral rect.i.tude), have been built up into a system of pleading as false as it is firmly grounded and imbued with ineradicable insincerity. This system consists, for the most part, of quibbling upon side-issues, throwing dust in the eyes of judges, cavilling, misrepresenting, taking advantage of technical errors, doing everything in short to gain a cause by indirect means. And from this false system neither honourable nor dishonest advocates are able to depart.

In justice to the legal profession, I must, however, say that I found many practicians who combined the gifts of eloquence and intellectual fervour with urbanity, cordiality, prudence, and disinterested zeal.

Outside the vicious circle of their system they were men of loyalty and honour. Among these I ought to pay a particular tribute to my friendly counsel and defender, Signor Testa. Knowing my circ.u.mstances and my upright motives, he refused to take the fees which were his due, and not unfrequently opened his purse to me at a pinch in my necessities. I have never met with a lawyer more quick at seizing the strong and weak points of a case, more rapid in his a.n.a.lysis of piles of doc.u.ments, more sagacious in divining the probable issue of a suit, or more acute in calculating the mental powers, the bias, and the equity of judges. Time and the circ.u.mstances of our several lives have drawn us somewhat apart.

But nothing can diminish the feeling of deep grat.i.tude which I shall always cherish for one who helped to heal the distractions and to improve the fallen fortunes of my family.

The final result of eight or nine tedious lawsuits, carried through with the a.s.sistance of Signor Testa, was that I received several parcels of our estates in Friuli, Vicenza, Bergamo, and Venice, which had been alienated by fraudulent evasions of entail.[137] Meanwhile I found time to visit my mother and Gasparo's family. The latter were busily engaged in concocting and translating plays for my brother's theatre. These visits, paid with cordiality and frankness on my side, were usually the occasions of requests for money on my mother's. She begged with maternal dignity for little loans. I complied to the best of my ability, and forgot to remind her of her debts. My sister-in-law forced herself to treat me with an affectation of flattery. My sisters looked upon me with real affection, checked in its expression by I know not what untoward influence. My brother accepted me with philosophical indifference.

XXV.

_A collision with my brother's family, due to old grudges and to present needs.--They make me a married man without my having taken a wife._

My brother Gasparo's income, derived from his portion of the family estates, from the interest on my mother's dowry and the annual allowance for my sisters' maintenance, together with the profits of his writing and of certain literary services rendered to his Excellency Marco Foscarini,[138] late Doge of glorious memory, amounted to about 1500 ducats, free of all debts and obligations. This was certainly nothing very splendid; but neither would the wealth of Crsus have been anything to boast of in the hands of an extravagant family, ruled only by the caprice of its component members.

I have mentioned above that Gasparo obtained the upper dwelling in our house at Venice, which was let for 150 ducats, while we three brothers received the lower dwelling, at that time inhabited by him. Some few months were allowed him to remove from the one apartment to the other.

But no sooner had he entered into legal possession of his new habitation than he, or perhaps I ought to say his wife, let it again to the n.o.ble lady Ginevra Loredan Zeno. She paid the rent of several years in advance, and installed herself in Gasparo's part of the mansion, while he, with all his family, continued to inhabit our part with the utmost sang-froid, taking no further heed of the engagement he was under to us three brothers. Now we had resolved to put this tenement into good repair and to let it for some years, until the debts of the estate had been discharged and we could go to live in it at peace. With this view we had already found a tenant, who was no other than the Contessa Gh.e.l.lini Balbi. She, on her side, had given up her old apartment, which was already let in advance to other tenants by her landlord. Time went on, and I saw no sign of our house being abandoned to our use, according to the family agreement. It appeared only too clearly that the part.i.tion I had demanded, my resolve to pay the family debts out of income without resorting to sale or mortgage, and my application to the courts for annulment of contracts made during my father's lifetime, were all of them unpardonable offences in the eyes of those who had made the debts, the mortgages, the contracts.

I began by gently asking for the house which was our portion, seeing that we had resigned the upper dwelling to our brother at his particular request. No answer reached me; but rumours ran around the city that I was now attempting to turn my old mother, my three marriageable sisters, my brother, his wife, and five innocent children into the streets. At this point I expected that one of those interminable lawsuits, which are the dishonour of the legal profession, but which never lack advocates to keep them going, would be commenced against me. In order to lend colour and substance to their false report, my relatives determined to give me a wife without consulting me. It was impossible to fix definite calumnies upon Mme. Gh.e.l.lini Balbi, because of her exemplary life and conspicuous piety. But my daily visits to her house offered a pretext for injurious insinuations; and I soon heard it announced that I was secretly married to this lady, and that all my plots had only this one end in view. Such gossip did me honour in some respects. Yet I was grieved that a lady of excellent conduct, devoted to her only son, and old enough to be my mother, should be made the b.u.t.t of malignant animosity.[139]