[110] A tablet over the entrance to the restaurant at the Calcina on the Zattere, records that Apostolo Zeno dwelt there. It was, perhaps, to this house that young Gozzi paid his visit. Zeno (b. 1668, d. 1750) exercised considerable influence over the Italian drama. He wrote plays for music and oratorios. For some years he held the post of Cesarean poet at Vienna, which he resigned to the more celebrated Metastasio.

[111] Luisa Pisana Bergalli was born at Venice in 1703, of humble parentage, being descended from a Piedmontese shoemaker. Luigi Mocenigo and Pisana Cornaro held her at the font, and gave her their two Christian names. She showed distinguished talents in early youth, and was educated by the painter Rosalba Carriera, afterwards by Caterino and Apostolo Zeno. At twenty-three she published a tragedy and an anthology of Italian poems by female writers; at twenty-five another tragedy; at thirty a translation of Terence, and a comedy dedicated to Count Jacopo Antonio Gozzi. It appears from this dedication to Le avventure del poeta that she was the protegée of both Count Gozzi and his wife, and on the best of terms with their children. She was thirty-five and Gasparo was twenty-five when they married. See Tommasei, Storia Civile nella Letteraria, pp. 185-188.

[112] The title Provveditore Generale di Mare was given to the supreme head of the Venetian naval and military forces in the Levant. He resided at Corfu, where he maintained a princely court, and ruled like a sovereign, being only responsible for his actions to the Senate. Next in importance to this functionary was the Provveditore Generale di Dalmazia, of whose Court we shall hear much in Gozzi's Memoirs. Casanova, who went to Corfu in the train of the Prov. Gen. Dolfino, called Il Bucentoro because of his grand manner, and the father of the famous Caterina Dolfin Tron, gives an excellent account of the Court there, its military, naval, and civil establishment. Chapters xiii.-xvi. of the first volume of his Memoirs deserve to be compared with the corresponding part of Gozzi's.

[113] Not at seventeen, but at twenty. Gozzi was born in 1720, and Quirini took the government of Dalmatia in 1740.

[114] Togato. The State dignitaries of Venice wore robes of various colours and forms, according to their office. A simple nobleman was bound to go abroad in a flowing robe of silk, or toga, ample enough to conceal whatever costume he may have worn beneath it.

[115] Armata, composed of naval and military forces, to act equally on sea and shore.

[116] It seems from the names of these larger galleys that they were the official ships of the Provveditore, his own flag-ship and her attendant convoy. Romanin (vol. viii. p. 372) says that at this epoch Venice kept fifteen heavy galleys, ten lighter, nine sailing ships of the frigate build, and twenty-four armed craft of other descriptions. The galleys and sailing ships were commanded only by patricians. This was her peace establishment.

[117] Gozzi says adjutante alone. Adjutante di campo is aide-de-camp.

[118] This word is in the Italian armata. The armata, to which Gozzi belonged, was properly an armament of mixed naval and military forces, and armata would naturally be translated "navy." He was attached to it, however, in the quality of soldier, and was eligible (as we shall afterwards see) for transfer into the land forces of the State in Lombardy. Thus he belonged to the Venetian army.

[119] This was the highest office in the State to which a cittadino could aspire. It conferred the rank of cavaliere. The Grand Chancellor could open public despatches; he attended the sittings of the Grand Council and the Senate, but without a vote, and was the official chief of all the civil servants.

[120] Probably Freschot, the author of several works on Venice, a Frenchman by birth.

[121] The native Dalmatians of Slav origin, inhabiting the inland villages and country districts, were called by this name.

[122] Scogli. A long low island opposite the harbour of Zara is so called.

[123] This and other French terms show to what extent the military system of Venice had been modernised.

[124] Razionato.

[125] This chapter will be read with interest by students of the Commedia dell' Arte. It throws light upon the way in which an actor of originality could adapt one of the fixed characters of that comedy, in this case the servetta, to his own talents and to local circumstances.

[126] Pallone is a game played with a large leather ball, filled with air, and something like our football. In Italy it is struck with the hand, which is armed for the purpose with gloves or a flat short bat fixed on the palm. Sides are chosen, and the game roughly resembles tennis on a large scale. Pallone is the original of our balloon.

[127] The sequin at this time was worth twenty-two lire Venete. The worth of the lira was about half a franc, says Romanin (vol. viii. p. 302). Romanin in the same place fixes the ducat at eight lire. Gozzi's debt amounted to 1248 lire. This would make only 156 ducats at the above rate. But the relation of the ducat to the sequin and the lira is very obscure, and seems to have varied according to the kind of ducat.

[128] Decime. Taxes annually raised upon the whole property of a Venetian.

[129] Opere, vol. vii. p. 393. This is the stanza—

This is said to the burlesque Carlo Magno of the poem. The passage in the text confirms the theory that Gozzi intended his Carlo Magno to represent the decrepit majesty of Venice.

[130] Almorò is the Venetian form of the name Ermolao.

[131] Gozzi's description of the Venetian Cortesan may serve as illustration to a popular play of Goldoni's, Momolo Cortesan. This was the first comedy of character Goldoni composed. Its title-rôle was written for a celebrated Pantalone, Golinetti (see Goldoni's Memoirs, part i. ch. 40). When he printed it, he translated the title into L'Uomo di Mondo, finding no exact equivalent for the Venetian phrase Cortesan. Goldoni's account of the character tallies with Gozzi's.

[132] In these and several passages which follow, Gozzi ascribes the pecuniary embarrassments of his family to the maladministration of his mother, aided by his sister-in-law. It it only fair to say, that Gasparo Gozzi's correspondence confirms his veracity. That favourite and favoured eldest son complains bitterly that, even to the last days of her life, his mother insisted on managing the property, and that she made underhand contracts to the prejudice of himself and his children. It was, in fact, a misfortune for the Gozzi that their father, Jacopo Antonio, married into a patrician family of higher rank and pretensions than his own. Angela Tiepolo, knowing herself to be one of the last representatives of a very noble house, with considerable expectations from her childless brother, drove her easy-going husband into ruinous expenditure, and domineered over her kindred by right of a marriage which savoured of a mésalliance. See the article upon her in Litta's Famiglie Celebri, sub tit. "Tiepolo."

[133] The bautta and the mask were permitted at Venice from the first Sunday in October until Ash Wednesday.

[134] This was a very long scarf of black silk, which, draped above the head, and fulling over the shoulders, was tied in a knot, and allowed to hang on both sides of the wearer's skirts. The mask or bautta was only permitted during the prolonged Venetian Carnival.

[135] The Italian is democraziano. Perhaps Gozzi wrote democriziano, from Democritus, the sage who laughed at all things. In either case the adjective is wrongly formed. It ought to be either democratico or democritico. But democrazia may have led him to democraziano. He not infrequently employs this phrase, which always puzzles me, because nobody was really less democratic than Carlo Gozzi, and as yet, in 1780, he had no reason, under the pressure of the Revolution, to dissemble.

[136] The theatres of Venice were called by the names of the parishes in which they stood, or of non-parochial churches to which they were contiguous. S. Angelo was one of the smaller.

[137] I have condensed in this sentence the details of a long and tiresome chapter (chap. xxix.). It is worth adding here that the law of Venice with regard to entail was very strict; time gave no title to a purchaser who had obtained possession of an estate subject to fidei commissa. One of Goethe's most interesting letters from Venice (October 5, 1786) contains the full description of a cause he heard pleaded in the Ducal palace for the recovery of illegally alienated real property. Goethe remarks upon the extraordinary permanence of trusts in Venice.

[138] The author of an unfinished work on Venetian literature.

[139] It seems probable that Gozzi was really at one time on the point of marrying this lady.

[140] The Avvogadori del Comune, or Advocatores Comunis, corresponded in a certain sense to the modern Procuratori di Stato, and had some resemblance to the Roman tribunes. They formed a High Court of Justice for the guardianship of property accruing to the Exchequer, for the protection of private rights in property, rights of minors and widows, the superintendence of registers of births and marriages, &c. Three patricians formed the board.

[141] The Somascan Order was founded about 1540 by Girolamo Miani, a Venetian senator, upon the model of the Theatines. Its object was education, principally of the poor. With regard to the school at S. Cipriano, it is worth mentioning that the famous adventurer, Casanova, was placed there by his guardian the Abbé Grimani in the year 1740 or thereabouts. He gives a full account of the institution in his Memoirs (vol. i. ch. vi.), from which it appears that at this epoch about 150 youths were educated by the Somascan monks. Readers of Casanova need hardly be reminded that he was expelled from the seminary after a few weeks' residence. Gasparo Gozzi was also educated here.

[142] This scene has actually been preserved and printed in Gasparo Gozzi's works. Opere, Minerva, Padova, vol. vii. It forms the 6th scene of the 3rd act of Esopo in Città, and is very much as Carlo Gozzi describes it. The ancient lady throws the principal blame for her domestic sufferings upon a certain "Sicofante, Dottor legista di questa città," whom I take to be Carlo's lawyer, Testa.

[143] Gozzi can hardly not have been thinking of poor Gratarol, when he penned these lines. Mentally he contrasts his own conduct under the inconvenience of a stage-satire with Gratarol's.

[144] See above, p. 319.

[145] On the Fondamenta Nuove, looking across Murano to the mountains of the Dolomites. See Tommasei, op. cit., p. 258.

[146] This was written in 1780, but when it was printed in 1797, Louis XVI. had little reason to be proud of his titles.

[147] He was made secretary to the Riformatori dello Studio.

[148] Gozzi here resumes a portion of the 29th chapter of his Memoirs, which I have condensed in Chapter XXIV. above (see note to p. 336). It seemed unnecessary to burden the translation of his autobiography with more of legal details than was absolutely necessary for understanding the tenor of his life-experience.