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

Автор: Gozzi Carlo

Издательство: Public Domain

Жанр: Зарубежная классика

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СКАЧАТЬ Bianchi? What Colombo? What gondolier? What wife?" exclaimed he in still greater heat. "The fellow keeps a disorderly house; and she is one of his hussies. When they came to you, she had a cushion stuffed beneath her clothes. They sell wine, draw all the disreputable people of the quarter together, and are the scandal of my parish. If you do not immediately get rid of the nuisance, you will be guilty of a mortal sin." I calmed him down, and made him laugh by the account I gave him of my interview with the soi-disant married couple. Then I promised to dislodge the people on the spot.

      This was sooner said than done. I first applied to the Avvogadori, who washed their hands of the affair. Then I begged the priest to lay an information before the Esecutori contro la Bestemmia.[12] He positively refused, telling me that loose women were only too powerfully protected at Venice, and that he had already burned his fingers on a previous occasion by proceeding against a notorious evil-liver. It was no business of his, and I must get out of the scrape as well as I could.

      To cut the story short, I was eventually relieved by my friend Paolo Balbi, who applied the following summary but efficacious remedy. "I informed Messer Grande of your affair,"[13] said Balbi, while explaining his proceedings: "he, as you are well aware, commands the whole tribe of constables and tipstaves; and I begged him to find some way of ousting the canaille from your house. Messer Grande dispatched one of his myrmidons, one who knows these hussies, to tell them, under the pretext of a charitable warning, that the chief of the police had orders to take them all up and send them handcuffed to prison. In their fright, the nest of rogues dispersed and left the quarter." After laughing heartily over the affair, and thanking my good friend, I walked home, reflecting deeply on red tape in public offices, perversions of legal justice, and the high-handed proceedings of that generous and expeditious judge, Messer Grande. [14]

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      1

      Despériers lived in France between 1480 and 1544. He was servant to Marguerite de Navarre, and a writer of Rabelaisian humour. His two principal works are called Cymbalum Mundi and Nouvelles, Récréations et Joyeux Dévis.

      2<

1

Despériers lived in France between 1480 and 1544. He was servant to Marguerite de Navarre, and a writer of Rabelaisian humour. His two principal works are called Cymbalum Mundi and Nouvelles, Récréations et Joyeux Dévis.

2

The Orco was a huge sea-monster, shaped like a gigantic crab. It first appeared in Boiardo's Orlando Innamorato (Bk. iii. Cant. 3), and was afterwards developed by Ariosto, Orl. Fur. (Cant. 17).

3

This was one of Gozzi's own comedies.

4

These words have so much local colouring that they must be left in the text and explained in a note. A sotto portico at Venice is formed by the projection of houses over the narrow path which skirts a small canal or rio; the first floor of the houses rests on pillars at the water-side. A ponte storto is a bridge built askew across a rio, not at right angles to the water, but slanting. A riva is the quay of stone which runs along the canals of Venice, here and there broken by steps descending into the water and serving as landing-places.

5

See above, vol. i. p. 299.

6

The narrow foot-paths between lines of houses at Venice are so called. They frequently have scarcely space enough for two men to walk abreast.

7

One of Pietro Longhi's pictures in the Museo Civico at Venice represents exactly such a scene as this in the workroom of a tailoress. The beau is there, and the woman prepared for flirtation.

8

Gozzi had a distinct object in writing these chapters on his love-affairs. Gratarol's accusation of his having been a hypocrite and covert libertine lay before him. He wished to make a clean breast of his frailties. To suppress this portion of his apologia pro vitâ suâ would have been to do him grave injustice. The Memorie must always be read as an answer to Gratarol's Narrazione. See Introduction, Part i.

9

There is a good deal said about this man in Casanova's Memoirs.

10

The translator of this narrative has taken the trouble to make this tedious detour on foot. The quarter in which Gozzi lived, remains exactly in the same condition as when he described it. His old palace has not altered; and the whole of the above scene can be vividly presented to the fancy by an inspection of the localities.

11

The following paragraphs, to the end of the chapter, are extracted and condensed from vol. iii. chap. v. of the Memorie.

12

A magistracy composed of four patricians, who controlled the manners of the town in matters of lawless and indecent living.

13

Messer Grande corresponded to the Bargello at Rome, and was the chief of catchpoles and constables.

14

This chapter on Gozzi's contrarieties, which I have supplemented with a few passages from the incoherent notes at the end of the Memorie, has received undue attention from Paul de Musset and critics who adopt his untrustworthy version of Gozzi's autobiography. De Musset strove to base upon it a theory that Gozzi was the victim of his own fabulous sprites. See Introduction, vol. i. p. 23.

СКАЧАТЬ

<p>12</p>

A magistracy composed of four patricians, who controlled the manners of the town in matters of lawless and indecent living.

<p>13</p>

Messer Grande corresponded to the Bargello at Rome, and was the chief of catchpoles and constables.

<p>14</p>

This chapter on Gozzi's contrarieties, which I have supplemented with a few passages from the incoherent notes at the end of the Memorie, has received undue attention from Paul de Musset and critics who adopt his untrustworthy version of Gozzi's autobiography. De Musset strove to base upon it a theory that Gozzi was the victim of his own fabulous sprites. See Introduction, vol. i. p. 23.