The impressions left upon my mind after this night"s reading were painful. I expected some disturbance of the peace through the malice of that woman, who had now become irreconcilably antagonistic. Meeting Sacchi next morning on the Piazza di San Marco, I asked him whether he had noticed the strange conduct of Mme. Ricci on the previous evening.
He said that he had certainly been aware of something wrong, but that he could not ascribe it to any cause. Then I communicated my suspicion.
"The actress," said I, "means to persuade Signor Gratarol that he is being satirised under the character of Don Adone." "What is her object?"
exclaimed Sacchi. "That I will tell you briefly," I replied: "she wants to gain credit with her new friend, to inflict an injury on your troupe, and to cause me annoyance by stirring up a quarrel between me and the gentleman in question." "It is not impossible," said Sacchi, "that she is planning something of the kind. But what are your reasons for thinking so?" "If you had only been attentive to her mutterings and att.i.tudinisings last evening, when the part of Don Adone was being read, you would not put that question," I answered. "I ask you, therefore, as a friend, to withdraw my play until the next season. Lent will soon arrive. The Ricci will go to Paris, and Signor Gratarol to Naples. You can make use of the _Droghe d"Amore_ later on, when its appearance will cause no scandal." After some persuasion, he promised to fulfil my wishes; and next morning he told me that the play had been suspended.
Here the affair would have rested if Signor Gratarol, poisoned by his mistress"s report, had not taken a step fatal for his own tranquillity.
She returned, as I had imagined, from the reading of my play, and told him that he was going to be exposed upon the stage in the person of Don Adone. He set all his influence at work to prevent the public exhibition of the comedy. The result was that, four days afterwards, Sacchi came to me in great confusion and told me that Signor Francesco Agazi, censor of plays for the Magistrato sopra alla Bestemmia, had sent for the _Droghe d"Amore_. A new revision was necessitated by certain complaints which had been brought against the role of Don Adone.
"So then," said I, "you have given the ma.n.u.script to Signor Agazi?"
"No," he answered; "I was afraid that I might lose it altogether. I told that gentleman that I had lent it to a certain lady.[60] He smiled and said that when she had done with it he expected to have it in his hands again. In fact, not wishing to be proved a liar in this matter, I took the play to the lady I have mentioned, related the whole story about Gratarol and Ricci, and recommended myself to her protection." Sacchi could not have taken any step more calculated to give importance to this incident. I said as much to him upon the spot; predicted that the lady, who was known to have a grudge against Signor Gratarol, would do her best to circulate the scandal; a.s.sured him that the whole town would blaze with rumour, that I should be discredited, and that he might find himself in a very awkward position. "The tribunals of the State," I added, "are not to be trifled with by any of your circ.u.mventions."
Signor Gratarol had made a great mistake. Instead of listening to the gossip of an actress, and then setting the machinery of the State in motion by private appeals to persons of importance, he ought to have come at once to me. I should have a.s.sured him of the simple truth, and the _Droghe d"Amore_ would have appeared without doing any dishonour to either of us.
His manuvring had the effect of putting all Venice upon the _qui vive_, and placing an instrument of retaliation against him in the hands of powerful enemies. The n.o.ble lady, Caterina Dolfin Tron, to whom Sacchi took my comedy, read it through, and read it to her friends, and pa.s.sed it about among a clique of high-born gentlemen and ladies. None of them found any mark of personal satire in the piece. All of them condemned Gratarol for his self-consciousness, and accused him of seeking to deprive the public of a rational diversion, while moving heaven and earth to reverse the decision of the censors of the State.
In two days the town buzzed of nothing but my wretched drama, Gratarol, and me. It was rumoured that I had composed a sanguinary satire. Not only Gratarol, but a crowd of gentlemen and ladies were to be brought upon the scene. A whole theatre, with its pit, boxes, stage, and purlieus could not have contained the mult.i.tude of my alleged victims.
Everybody knew their exact names and t.i.tles. Neighbours laid their heads together, quarrelled, denied, maintained, argued, whispered in each other"s ears, waxed hot and angry, told impossible anecdotes, contradicted their own words, and, what was most amusing, everybody drew his information from an infallible source.
One thing they held for certain--that I had made Gratarol the protagonist of my satire. That became a fixed idea, which it only wanted his own imprudence to turn into a fact.
Knowing pretty well where the real point of the mischief lay, I determined to act, if possible, upon the better feelings of Mme. Dolfin Tron.[61] I had enjoyed the privilege of her acquaintance for many years. But my unsociable and unfashionable habits made me negligent of those attentions which are expected from a man of quality. I did not pay her the customary visits; and when we met, she was in the habit of playfully saluting me with the t.i.tle of _Bear_. My brother Gasparo, on the contrary, saw her every day, and she bestowed on him the tender epithet of _Father_. Such being our respective relations, I thought it best to apply to him.
I asked my brother, then, to do all he could to induce this powerful lady to oppose the production of my comedy for at least the present season. Through the machinations of Signora Ricci, against my will, and much to my discredit, the piece was going to create a public scandal, with serious injury to a gentleman whom I had not meant to satirise. My brother, muttering a curse on meddlesome women in general and actresses in particular, undertook the office. He did not succeed. Mme. Tron replied that I was making far too much fuss about nothing, and that my comedy had pa.s.sed beyond my control. It had become the property of a _capocomico_, and was at the present moment under the inspection of the State.
Not many days elapsed before I was summoned to the presence of Francesco Agazi, the censor, as I have before observed, for the Signori sopra la Bestemmia.[62] I found him clothed in his magisterial robes, and he began as follows: "You gave a comedy, ent.i.tled _Le Droghe d"Amore_, to the company of Sacchi. I perused it and licensed it for the theatre at S. Salvatore. The comedy has been pa.s.sed, and must appear. You have no control over it. Pray take no steps to obstruct its exhibition. The magistracy which I serve does not err in judgment." I could not refrain from commenting upon Signor Gratarol"s action in this matter, and protesting that I had never meant to satirise the man. He bade me take no heed of persons like Gratarol, whose heads were turned by outlandish fashions. "I made some retrenchments," he added, "in the twelfth scene of the last act of your comedy. They amount, I think, to about ten or twelve verses. These lines expressed sentiments such as are usually maintained by men of Gratarol"s sort. You meant them to be understood ironically. But our Venetians will not take them so. What strikes their ear, they retain in its material and literal sense. And they learn much which is mischievous, unknown to them before.--May I parenthetically observe that certain gentlemen want to give orders where they have no right to speak?--I repeat to you that the magistracy which I serve does not err; and I repeat the decree which has been pa.s.sed." Having spoken these words, Signor Agazi bowed, and left me for his business.
What pa.s.sed between me and the censor I repeated to friends of mine, who will bear me witness that I found myself estopped in my attempts to suppress the comedy. It had to appear; and Signor Gratarol owed this annoyance to his having powerful enemies.
Unfortunately he did his best to exasperate these enemies. Teodora Ricci, primed by him and parroting his words, went about libelling men and women of the highest rank, whom she had never seen. Phrases of the grossest scurrility were hurled at eminent people by their names. "If Gratarol has committed himself in this way to an actress," said I in my sleeve, "what must he not have let fall to other friends and acquaintances? Such indiscretion marks him out as little fitted for the post of amba.s.sador at Naples or elsewhere."
I have said that I had lost all authority over my wretched drama. I only wanted to see it well hissed on its first appearance, and to bury the annoyances it caused me in a general overthrow. Yet I was obliged to be present at rehearsals. At the first which I attended, I noticed that two of the roles had been changed. I had given Don Adone to an actor called Luigi Benedetti, and the jealous Don Alessandro to Giovanni Vitalba.
Sacchi reversed my disposition of these parts, alleging that Benedetti was better fitted to sustain the character of a furious lover than Vitalba, who was somewhat of a stick. This seemed to me not unreasonable; and I was so accustomed to have my plays cut and hacked about by the actors, that I accepted his decision.
At the second rehearsal, Mme. Ricci asked me negligently if I knew why this alteration had been made. I answered that Sacchi had explained it to my satisfaction. She held her tongue, thinking doubtless that I was well acquainted with certain machinations of which she had fuller knowledge than I.
At last the piece appeared--it was the night of January 10, 1777--at the theatre of S. Salvatore. I went there in good time, and found the entrance thronged with a vast mult.i.tude. For three hours people had been clamouring for seats, and the whole house was crammed. They told me that the boxes had been sold at fabulous prices. This might have swelled another playwright"s heart with pride. I, on the contrary, was extremely dejected by finding my worst antic.i.p.ations realised. Pushing my way through the press, which enc.u.mbered every pa.s.sage and clung against the walls, I reached the _coulisses_ with much toil.[63] There I saw a swarm of masks begging for places anywhere at any price. "What the deuce is the meaning of this extraordinary concourse?" I exclaimed. The Ricci answered me at once with: "Don"t you know? The town has come to see your satire on a certain person." I put her down by saying bluntly that more than a year ago she heard my play, and knew that there was no personal satire in it. It was not my fault if diabolical intrigues and a succession of blunders had given it a false complexion. She dropped her eyes. I turned my back, and took refuge in a box I had upon the third row of the theatre.
Going up the staircase, I caught sight before me of Gratarol"s unhappy wife, and heard her chattering to certain gentlemen she met upon the way: "I wanted to see my husband on the stage." These words of the poor deserted woman enlightened me as to the expectation of the public. Yet why was the whole house so intoxicated? why did a wife look forward to the spectacle of her husband"s caricature? I can only explain this phenomenon by remembering the corruption of our age. Women seduced and left to shift for themselves, rivals supplanted in their love-affairs, jealous husbands, wives abandoned and heart-broken, form an inflammable audience for such a piece as the _Droghe d"Amore_ under the notorious circ.u.mstances of its first appearance.
Sacchi joined me in my box; and casting my eyes over the sea of faces, I soon perceived Signor Gratarol with a handsome woman at his side. He had come to air his philosophy, but I trembled for him. The curtain rose, and the play proceeded with great spirit. All the actors did their best.
I was satisfied with their performance, and the audience applauded. At length, toward the close of the first act, Don Adone appeared. Then, and not till then, I understood the reason of the change of parts by which this role had fallen to Vitalba.[64] He was a good fellow, but a poor artist; and unfortunately he resembled Signor Gratarol pretty closely both in figure and colour of hair. The knavery of the comedians had furnished him with clothes cut and trimmed exactly on the pattern of those worn by Gratarol. He had been taught to imitate his mincing walk and other gestures. The caricature was complete; and I had to confess that Signor Gratarol had actually been parodied upon the stage in my comedy of the _Droghe d"Amore_. Innocent as I was of any wish to play the part of Aristophanes in modern Venice, the fact was obvious; and the audience greeted Vitalba with a storm of applause and rounds of clapping which deafened our ears.
I turned sharply upon Sacchi, and complained bitterly of the liberty he had taken with my unoffending comedy. He only shrugged his shoulders, and said he was afraid that an exhibition which promised so well for his money-box might be suppressed as a public scandal. That was all I could extort from him; and the play advanced to the middle of the third act, accompanied with universal approval. Whenever Don Adone entered and spoke a line or two, he was greeted with thunders of applause. I still hoped for those salutary hisses which might have d.a.m.ned the piece. The audience had been crammed together now for full seven hours; they numbered some two thousand persons, and were largely composed of people from the lower ranks of life. It was no wonder that they began to be restless, fought together, tried to leave the house, and raised a din which drowned the voices of the actors. Don Adone made his last exit, and there was nothing to excite interest but the dregs of an involved and stationary plot. The hubbub rose to a tumult, and my hopes rose with it. The actors gabbled through the last scenes in helpless unintelligible dumb-show. At last the drop-scene fell upon a storm of cat-calls, howls, hisses, and vociferations. I turned to Sacchi and said: "Your vile machinations deserved this retribution. Now you will admit that I prophesied the truth about my play." "Pooh!" he answered, "the play took well enough up to a certain point. It is only necessary to shorten it a little, and we shall not have the same scene another night." Then he left the box all in a heat, without waiting for my reply and without even bidding me good-night.
LVIII.
_Gratarol tries to stop the performance of the play, which is no longer in my power.--Intervention of Signor Carlo Maffei.--Conference with him and Gratarol at my house.--The worst hour I ever lived through._
Next morning the actors came to me with joy beaming on their faces, and announced that the _Droghe d"Amore_ was going to be performed again. The town insisted on its repet.i.tion; and they had brought the ma.n.u.script, hoping I would condescend to make some alterations and curtailments.
Much as I disliked the news, I was glad at least to get my composition back. I made the players promise to modify Don Adone"s costume, so that the effect of caricature might be reduced, and then sat down to hack away at the comedy. Besides shortening it at the expense of structure, plot, and coherence of parts, I carefully erased all pa.s.sages which might seem to have some bearing upon Signor Gratarol. In this way, by mutilating my work and changing the costume of Don Adone, I flattered myself that the illusion of the public might be dissipated. Vain hope!
The cancer had taken firm hold, and was beyond the reach of any cautery.
The _Droghe d"Amore_ was repeated upon four successive nights to crowded audiences.[65] Don Adone, in spite of my endeavours, still formed the princ.i.p.al attraction. All I could do was to persuade Sacchi to replace it by another piece upon the fifth evening. I kept away from the theatre after the second representation; and on the morning of the fifth it gave me satisfaction, while crossing the Rialto, to read placards announcing an improvised comedy at S. Salvatore. "Sacchi," said I, "has kept his word." But this was not the case. Plenty of people stopped to tell me what had happened at the theatre the night before.
Just as the curtain was going up and a full house was calling for the spectacle, a messenger arrived to say that Mme. Ricci had fallen downstairs, hurting her leg so badly that she could not move. An indescribable tumult arose; shrieks, screams, curses, squabbles, hustlings,--all the commotion of an eager audience deprived of its legitimate amus.e.m.e.nt.
When I reached the piazza, several actors of the troupe confirmed the news in all its details. They added that Ricci"s husband had to go before the footlights in order to a.s.sure the public of his wife"s accident. But n.o.body believed that this was more than a ruse concocted by Signor Gratarol to stop the play. Surgeons were sent to Mme. Ricci"s house, who reported her in perfect health. Signor Vendramini forwarded an account of the disturbance at his theatre to the tribunals of the State, and they decreed that the comedy was to be repeated on the night of the 17th. An officer of the Council of Ten received orders to attend Mme. Ricci to the theatre on that occasion, and see that she performed her duty.
Thus Gratarol"s unworthy stratagem made matters infinitely worse for us.
I only discovered at a later date that he was seeking to gain time for dark and treacherous machinations against my person.
On the 15th of January I found myself, as usual, at S. Salvatore, expecting one of those old-fashioned improvised comedies which never fail to divert me. My excellent friend, Signor Carlo Maffei, stepped up, and begged for a few moments" serious conversation. I a.s.sented; we entered his box; he carefully secured the door, and made the following communication. But before proceeding to relate what pa.s.sed between us, I must describe a few traits of this worthy gentleman"s character. He is the very soul of honour, scrupulously upright in all his dealings, incapable of trickery or meanness, but gifted with such tenderness of heart and sensibility that he sometimes falls into mistakes of judgment about people who are not distinguished by his own sterling qualities.
Signor Maffei only erred in admiring me and my writings beyond their merits. Yet he lived a very different life from mine. He was a prominent member of that society which is called _bon ton_ and _the great world_ at Venice. Partaking freely of its amus.e.m.e.nts, he had formed an intimacy with Signor Gratarol. Indeed, he must have known that gentleman several years before he became my friend. This accounts for the proposal which I shall now report.
"Gratarol"s misfortunes," he began, "have made a deep and painful impression on my feelings. He came a little while ago to visit me, and literally drew tears from my eyes. He is in a state bordering on distraction. What he came to ask was whether I could undertake to arrange a conference between you and him apropos of that unfortunate comedy. It is indifferent to him whether we meet at my house or at yours."
When I heard this, I felt sure that some scorpion must be concealed beneath so tardy an attempt at reconciliation. I told Maffei so, and asked why Gratarol had not sought me out at the commencement, when Mme.
Ricci was pouring her insidious venom into his ears. Now it was too late to do any good. I had lost the last thread of authority over my play.
The Supreme Tribunal had taken cognisance of the affair, and we were both powerless to stir a finger. All the same, at Maffei"s request, I was willing to meet Gratarol, although I could not conceive what object he had in ferreting me out.
If I had but known, while my friend was pleading for him, that this horned serpent had just presented an information to the Inquisitors of State, denouncing me in person, and deliberately aiming at my honour and my safety, I should have returned a very different answer.[66]
In the end, after enumerating all that had occurred in the long history of my unlucky drama, I gave my consent, suggesting at the same time that the meeting had better not take place in my house, and expressly begging Signor Maffei to let Gratarol clearly understand beforehand that I was utterly helpless with regard to the _Droghe d"Amore_.
Maffei left the box at once, repaired to Signor Gratarol, and soon returned with the answer that his friend was absolutely determined to come to my house for the interview.
I spent a large part of that night in racking my brains to imagine what Gratarol could possibly hope to gain by this new step of his. Giving the problem up as insoluble, I laid a scheme of my own, the only one which seemed to me at all practicable, and which I resolved to propose to him upon the morning of the 16th. It was as follows. I should write a prologue addressed to the public, saying that my comedy was going to be stopped after the evening of the 17th, at my own request, because it had been turned to bad account and misinterpreted, to the injury of myself and persons whom I esteemed as friends. This prologue could be printed and distributed before the performance of the play. Then Signor Gratarol and I would go together, and take our places amicably side by side in a front box of the theatre. The whole world would see that we were not at enmity, and I should be able to convince him, as the play proceeded, that Don Adone was not intended to be a personal satire on himself.
The plan approved itself to my judgment, and I went to sleep, persuaded that I had found a satisfactory way out of our worst difficulties.
Next morning, the 16th of January, I rose betimes, entered my study, and hurriedly composed a little prologue of twenty-four lines. Hardly had I finished the last verse, when my servant announced Signor Gratarol in a sonorous voice. Yes, there was the raging Cerberus Gratarol, accompanied by the gentle lamb Maffei! And all hopes of concealing this visit from the public had vanished. My servant had their names upon his lips, and Venice would soon be saying that my humiliated enemy had gone to prostrate himself at his persecutor"s feet.[67]
Gratarol did not make his entrance like a suitor. He was closely masked, and came swaggering into my tiny workroom with the swaying gait which is called "English style." When he raised his mask, the steam from his face rose to the ceiling, and I could see by his rolling eyes, quivering lips, spasms of pain, and frensied contortions, that the man suffered like the t.i.tan with the vulture preying on his liver.
We all three took seats, and Signor Gratarol opened the conference by saying: "I have come to visit you, not as a suitor, but as a reasoner upon the merits of this case. Pray do not interrupt the thread of my argument, but give me patient hearing to the end." For upwards of an hour he thundered and declaimed like an infuriate Demosthenes against what he chose to call my "vindictive comedy." "Not that the personage of Don Adone has the least resemblance to my character," he added, "but that you meant it to hurt and outrage me." Starting on this note, he proceeded to dilate upon the splendour of his birth and education, his widespread celebrity, the offices of State he had discharged, his election as amba.s.sador at Naples, and the magnificent career which lay before him. "From the height of all this glory," said he, "I have fallen in a moment, and become the public laughing-stock through your comedy!"
Then he touched upon his enemies among the great, and alluded significantly to a certain lady who had vowed his ruin. That led up to a moving picture of his present distress: "When I pa.s.s along the streets or cross the piazza in my magisterial robes, the very sc.u.m and _canaille_ swarm around me, leave their shops, and point me out as the secretary to the Senate who is being turned to ridicule in your _Droghe d"Amore_." He writhed upon his seat and tears fell from his eyes as he spoke these words, never reflecting that it was not _my_ play, but _his own_ bad management which had brought these tragi-comic woes upon him.
Resuming the thread of his discourse, he imprudently let out the fact that during the last few days he had presented a pet.i.tion--to what tribunal he did not say--for the suppression of my piece. Then, hastily catching himself up, as though he had gone farther than he meant, "In short," he added, "every door has been shut against me!" I was not so stupid as not to guess the awful tribunal to which an amba.s.sador-elect had applied, and by which he had been rejected. Opening my eyes wide, I turned them meaningly on my worthy friend Maffei, as though to ask: "What devil of a visitor have you brought here for my torment?"
At length the pith of the oration came to light. Admitting me to be susceptible of justice, humane feeling, religion, honour, magnanimity, and a host of other virtues, Gratarol laid it down as an axiom that "I was able and that I ought to stop the performance of the comedy upon the evening of the 17th, and so long as the world lasted." "_Able_ and _ought_," exclaimed I to myself; "when I have made it clear to Maffei that I cannot stir a finger to prevent the play, and have already been rebuked by a respectable magistrate for attempting to do so!" I perceived that Maffei had omitted to inform Gratarol of my powerlessness. However, I determined to hear his speech to the end in patience. He now proceeded to demonstrate my power by a.s.serting that Sacchi was not in a position to refuse any of my requests;[68] Sacchi had declared he would be governed by me in the matter of the comedy; Sacchi was independent of the patrician Vendramini; it was consequently my duty to put pressure upon Sacchi; all I had to do was to go to Sacchi and forbid the performance. "If you do not do so," he continued, "you will become deservedly an object of hatred to your country; everybody regards you as the author of my misfortunes, and the public is on the point of turning round to take my side against you." I knew that this was unluckily only too probable; but the painful position in which we were both placed had been created, not by my malice, but by his credulity and blundering.
When this oration came to an end, I replied as briefly and as calmly as I could. I began by observing that even if I had the power to stop the play, I should expose myself to the greatest misconceptions. Everybody would believe that it had been suspended by an order from the magistracy in consequence of its libellous character. But that was not the real question at issue. The question was whether I had or had not the power to do this. By a succinct enumeration of all the incidents connected with the revision of the comedy, I proved that neither myself nor Sacchi could interfere with a performance officially commanded and announced for to-morrow evening. Gratarol put in abruptly: "What you are saying is irrelevant and inconsequential. My reasoning has made it certain that you can and ought to stop the play to-morrow and in perpetuity." At this point I begged to remind him that he had recently applied to a supreme tribunal--by his own admission, let drop in the hurry of his cogent reasoning--and that "the door had been shut in his face." It was of little use to argue with Signor Gratarol. To every thing I said he kept exclaiming: "Nonsense, nonsense! You can and must stop the performance."
Wishing to cut matters short, but not without the greatest difficulty, and only by the a.s.sistance of Signor Maffei, I got him to listen to the plan I had devised that morning, and read him out my prologue. It was composed in a popular style, and ran as follows: