Builders of United Italy. Rupert Sargent Holland

in Rome was the most delightful he had yet known. His house was a pleasant villa near the Baths of Diocletian. Here he wrote and studied in the morning. Later in the day he went for long rides through the neighboring country, and the evenings he spent with the woman who had become his chief inspiration.

      In time, however, the poet’s visits to the Countess became the subject of unfavorable comment, and the Cardinal, her brother-in-law, brought the matter to the attention of the Papal Court. Realizing the delicacy of the situation, Alfieri reluctantly decided that he must quit Rome, and in May, 1783, he set out again as a wanderer, his ambition lost, his life offering him no further interests.

      As in early youth he now took to rapid traveling for solace, carrying on at the same time a continual correspondence with the Countess. He wrote a few sonnets, but found that his mind was too unsettled to allow him to engage in any more lengthy labors. He went to France, and then to England, and in each country visited scenes which the impetuosity of his youth had neglected. Horses again made their appeal to him in London, and he bought fourteen, “as many horses as he had written tragedies,” he states. With these horses he soon returned to Turin, and made a short visit to his mother, whom he had not seen for a long time. When he left her he went to Piacenza, and here he heard that the Countess had at last been released from the restraint under which she had lived at Rome, and that as her health was delicate she had gone to Baden. He was in two minds as to his course, the thought of possible calumny to her bade him refrain from going to Baden at once, and he tried to content himself in Siena with his old friend Gandellini. The continual interchange of letters gradually wore away his resolution, and at last the time came when he could keep from her no longer. August 4, 1784, he set out to join her and within a fortnight felt his old joy return. Immediately his thoughts grew fertile, he began to write again as he had not done since he had quitted her in Rome. There was no question but that her presence acted as a continual inspiration to his genius.

      To this period of new happiness belonged the dramas of “Agide,” “Sofonisba,” and “Mirra.” The plot of the latter came to him as he was reading the speech of Mirra to her nurse in the “Metamorphoses” of Ovid, and was written in the first heat of his emotion at the woman’s words. He was somewhat in doubt as to the success of a play written on such a subject, but it was hailed as a triumph at its first presentation some years later, and made a remarkable impression on Byron and on Madame de Staël, and was considered by most critics as Ristori’s finest impersonation.

      After two months the Countess had to return to Italy, and Alfieri’s gloom at the separation was further increased by the news of the death of his friend Gandellini. He went to Siena, but found that city lonely without his friend, and passed the winter in Pisa. He did a great amount of reading, repolished his later dramas, and prepared new volumes of them for the press. When winter ended he spent another two months of summer with the Countess at Colmar, and then again they separated. This time he resolved to work unremittingly, and did so until his health failed and he had to rest. At about the same time the Countess decided to leave Italy permanently, and at length Alfieri, towards the close of 1786, joined her and went with her to Paris. He writes in his memoirs of this journey into France, “This country which had always proved extremely disagreeable to me, as much on account of my own character, as the manners of the people, now appeared a perfect elysium.” There are many glimpses to be had of this new life in the French capital. Montanari recounts how the Marquis Pindemonte, himself a dramatist, used each evening to take an omelette soufflé in the Countess’s room, while Alfieri sat in the chimney corner sipping his chocolate. Under such peaceful auspices the poet spent many months in a critical preparation of all his works for new publication.

      In February, 1788, word reached the Countess that her husband had died in Rome, and it would appear that she was soon afterwards married to Alfieri, although in the will of the latter she is referred to as the Countess of Albany and not as his wife. His memoirs do not once speak of her as his wife, but from the date of her husband’s death their life together was uninterrupted. It is now generally assumed that they were privately married about this time.

      For three years the two lived quietly in Paris, spending their summers and autumns at a new home Alfieri had acquired in Alsace. During these years he printed two editions of his works, supervised their sales, and wrote his remarkably entertaining memoirs, which were finished up to May, 1790. The end of the three years found Paris on the brink of the great Revolution.

      Alfieri saw the black clouds gathering on the French horizon, but stayed on in the desire to complete the printing of his works. He was in turn amazed, alarmed, and disgusted at the succeeding events in the establishment of a republic. The principles proclaimed by these so-called destroyers of tyrants were not the principles of his own freedom-loving heart, nor those of any of his heroic characters. He writes, “My heart was torn asunder on beholding the holy and sublime cause of liberty betrayed by self-called philosophers—so much did I revolt at witnessing their ignorance, their folly, and their crimes; at beholding the military power, and the insolence and licentiousness of the civilians stupidly made the basis of what they termed political liberty, that I henceforth desired nothing more ardently than to leave a country which, like a lunatic hospital, contained only fools or incurables.”

      Circumstances, however, conspired to keep them in Paris, the Countess was dependent upon France for two-thirds of her income, Alfieri was finishing the printing of his dramas. The hour came when Alfieri determined that further delay would be more than foolhardy, and so, on August 18, 1792, having obtained passports with great difficulty, he drove with the Countess to the city barrier. A dramatic scene followed. The National Guards found the passports correct, and would have let the travelers pass, but at the same moment a crowd of drunken revelers broke from a neighboring cabaret, and attracted by the well-laden carriage, proceeded to stop its passage, while they debated whether they should stone it or set it on fire. The Guards remonstrated, but the revelers complained bitterly that people of wealth should leave the city. Alfieri lost all prudence, and jumping from his carriage, seized the passports from the man who held them and, as he himself tells the incident, “Full of disgust and rage, and not knowing at the moment, or in my passion despising the immense peril that attended us, I thrice shook my passport in my hand and shouted at the top of my voice, ‘Look! Listen! Alfieri is my name; Italian and not French; tall, lean, pale, red hair; I am he; look at me; I have my passport, and I have had it legitimately from those who could give it; we wish to pass, and by Heaven, we will pass!’ ”

      The crowd was surprised, and before they had recovered Alfieri and the Countess had driven past the barriers and were safely on their way. They had left Paris none too soon. Two days later the same authorities that had granted the passports confiscated the horses, furniture, and books that Alfieri had left behind in Paris and declared both the Countess and Alfieri refugee aristocrats. The fact that they were both foreigners appeared to be of no importance. It was well that they had gone. The Countess was too illustrious a personage to have escaped for long the fury of the fast-gathering mob, and had she been lost Alfieri would have shared her fate.

      Florence thenceforth became the home of the Countess and of Alfieri. He wrote desultorily, commenting upon what he had seen in France, but for the most part devoted himself to a study of the classics. In 1795, when he was forty-six years of age, he started to learn Greek, and was so fired with the desire that in a short time he had added an intimate knowledge of Homer, Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides to that he already had of the Latin authors. He was so much interested in the “Alcestis” of Euripides that he wrote an original drama based on the same theme. He was described at this time as of a tall and commanding figure, with a face of intelligence, and the look of one born to command, rather than obey. His forehead was broad and lofty; his red hair fell in thick masses around it.

      The restless youth had changed to a methodical, studious man, he arranged his day by rule, and followed that rule exactly. Only one event disturbed him, and that was the occupation of Florence by French troops. He had distrusted the French while he lived among them, now when they came to hold Florence in subjection his hatred of tyranny bade him despise them. He refused to receive the call of the French general who, having read his works, was anxious to meet him. On the correspondence which passed between them in reference to this matter Alfieri wrote, “Dialogue between a lion in a cage, and his crocodile guardian.”

      When