The Memoirs of Count Carlo Gozzi; Volume the Second. Gozzi Carlo

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ impresario of the opera;[9] it is notorious that the fellow was a good span shorter than me, two palms broader, and wholly different in dress and personal appearance. Well, through a tedious course of years, as long as this man lived, it was my misfortune to be stopped upon the road almost every day, by singers and dancers of both sexes, by chapel-masters, tailors, painters, letter-carriers, &c., all of whom mistook me for Michele. I had to listen to interminable complaints, lengthy expressions of gratitude, inquiries after lodgings, grumblings about meagre decorations and scanty wardrobes. From the letter-carriers I had, over and over again, to refuse letters and parcels addressed to Michele dall'Agata, screaming, protesting, swearing that I was not Michele. All these persons, when they reluctantly at last took leave, turned back from time to time and stared at me, like men bereft of sense, showing their firm conviction that I was Michele, who had reasons for not wishing to appear Michele. One summer, on reaching Padua, I learned that Signora Maria Canziani, an excellent and well-conducted dancer, and my good friend, had lately been confined. I wished to pay her a visit, and inquired from a woman at her lodgings if I might be introduced into her room. She responded with these words addressed to her mistress: "Madam, Signor Michele dall'Agata is waiting outside, and would like to offer his respects to you." When I entered the apartment, poor Canziani burst into such peals of laughter at the woman's blunder that I thought she must have died. Having paid this visit, I chanced to meet the celebrated professor of astronomy, Toaldo, on the bridge of San Lorenzo. He knew me perfectly, and I knew him as well. I bowed; he looked me in the face, lifted his hat with gravity, and passed onwards, saying: "Addio Michele!" The continual persistence of this error almost brought me to imagine that I was Michele. If Michele had earned the ill-will of brutal and revengeful enemies, this mistaken identity would certainly have been for me no laughing matter.

      One very hot evening, when the splendour of the moon was turning night into day, I went abroad to take the air, and was conversing with the patrician Francesco Gritti on the piazza of San Marco. I heard a voice behind me saying: "What are you doing here at this hour? Why don't you go to bed and sleep, you ass?" These words were accompanied with two smart raps upon my back. I turned to resent the affront, and found myself facing the patrician Cavaliere Andrea Gradenigo, who gazed fixedly at me, and then exclaimed: "Pray pardon me! I could have sworn that you were Daniele Zanchi." Some explanations and excuses followed regarding the cuffs and the title of ass, which I had got through being taken for a Daniele. The cavaliere, it seems, was familiar enough with this fellow to call him ass and give him a couple of thwacks in sign of amicable pleasantry.

      Not less whimsical was the following incident of the same description. I happened to be talking one very fine day with my friend Carlo Andrich on the Piazza di San Marco, when I observed a Greek, with mustachios, long coat, and red cap, who had with him a boy dressed in the same costume. When he saw me, the Greek ran up to us, exhibiting ecstatic signs of joy. After embracing and kissing me with rapture, he turned to the boy and said: "Come, lad, and kiss the hand here of your uncle Costantino." The boy seized and kissed my hand. Carlo Andrich stared at me; I stared at Carlo Andrich: we were like a pair of images. At length I asked the Greek for whom he took me. "What a joke!" said he; "aren't you my dear friend Costantino Zucalà?" Andrich held his sides to save himself from bursting, and it took me seven minutes to persuade the Greek that I was not Signor Constantino Zucalà. On making inquiries with people who knew Signor Zucalà, I was assured that this worthy merchant was a short fat man, without one grain of resemblance to myself.

      I shall probably have wearied out my readers by relating the hundredth part of such occurrences. I will now glance at the hundredth part of the contretemps which were continually annoying me.

      In winter or in spring, in summer or in autumn, the same thing always happened. If I chanced to be caught by some sudden unexpected downpour, I might kick my heels as long as I liked under a colonnade or in a shop, waiting till the rain stopped and I could get home dry; but not on one single occasion did I ever have the consolation of seeing out the deluge; on the contrary, it invariably redoubled in fury, as though to spite me. Goaded at last by the nuisance of this eternal useless waiting, fretful and eager to find myself at home, I exposed myself in all meekness to the deluge, and reached my dwelling wet to the skin, dripping with water. But no sooner had I arrived in this pitiful plight, unlocked the door, and taken shelter, than the clouds rolled by and the sun began to show his face, just as though he meant to laugh at my discomfort.

      Eight times out of ten, through the whole course of my life, when I hoped to be alone, and to occupy my leisure with reading or writing for my own distraction and amusement, letters or unexpected visitors, more tiresome even than worrying thoughts or importunate letters, would come to interrupt me and put my patience on the rack. Eight times out of ten, since I began to shave, no sooner had I set myself before the looking-glass, than people arrived in urgent haste to speak with me on business, or persons of importance, whom I could not keep waiting in the ante-chamber. I had to wash the soap-suds from my face, and leave my room half-shaved, to listen to such folk on business, or to people of quality whom good manners forced me to oblige.

      What I am going to relate is hardly decent, yet I shall tell it, because it is the simple truth, and furnishes a good example of these persecuting contrarieties. Almost every time when a sudden necessity has compelled me to seek some lonely corner in a street, a door is sure to open, and a couple of ladies appear. In a hurry I run up another blind alley, and lo and behold another pair of ladies make their entrance on the scene. The result is, that I am compelled to dodge from pillar to post, suffering the gravest inconveniences, to which my modesty exposes me. These, however, are but trifles, mere irritating gnat-bites.

      Those who have the patience to read the remaining chapters of my insipid Memoirs, will admit that the evil star of these untoward circumstances never ceased to plague me. Certainly the troubles in which poor Pietro Antonio Gratarol, for whom I was sincerely sorry, involved me by his strange behaviour, were not slight or inconsiderable.

      I think that the following incident is sufficiently comic to be worth narration. I was living in the house of my ancestors, in the Calle della Regina at S. Cassiano. The house was very large, and I was its sole inhabitant; for my two brothers, Francesco and Almorò, had both married and settled in Friuli, leaving me this mansion as part of my inheritance. During the summer months, when people quit the city for the country, I used also to visit Friuli. I was in the habit of leaving the keys of my house with a corn-merchant, my neighbour, and a very honest man. It chanced one autumn, through one of the tricks my evil fortune never ceased to play, that rains and inundations kept me in Friuli longer than usual, far indeed into November. Snow upon the mountains, and the winds which brought fine weather, caused an intense cold. I travelled toward Venice, well enveloped in furs, traversing deep bogs, floundering through pitfalls in the road, and crossing streams in flood. At last, one hour after nightfall, I arrived, half dead with the discomforts of the journey, congealed, fatigued, and wanting sleep. I left my boat at the post-house near S. Cassiano, made a porter shoulder my portmanteau, and a servant take my hat-box under his arm. Then I set off home, wrapped up in my pelisse, all anxiety to put myself into a well-warmed bed. When we reached the Calle della Regina, we found it so crowded with people in masks and folk of all sexes, that it was quite impossible for my two attendants with their burdens to push a way to my house-door. "What the devil is the meaning of this crowd?" I asked a bystander. "The patrician Bragadino has been made Patriarch of Venice to-day," was the man's reply. "They are illuminating and keeping open-house; doles of bread, wine, and money are being given to the people for three days. This is the reason of the enormous crowd." On reflecting that the door of my house was close to the bridge by which one passes to the Campo di Santa Maria Mater Domini, I thought that, by making a turn round the Calle called del Ravano, I might be able to get out into the Campo, then cross the bridge, and effect an entrance into my abode.[10] I accomplished this long detour together with the bearers of my luggage; but when I reached the Campo, I was struck dumb with astonishment at the sight of my windows thrown wide open, and my whole house adorned with lustres, ablaze with wax-candles, burning like the palace of the sun. After standing half a quarter of an hour agaze with my mouth open to contemplate this prodigy, I shook myself СКАЧАТЬ