campaign, and assigning their portions of the balance to my
brothers, I took breath again, like a man broken by a tedious and
disastrous journey, who stretches out his wearied limbs upon a bed of
down.

XLIV.

_The beginning of dissensions in Sacchi's company.--My attitude of
forbearance and ridiculous heroisms._

Having spent ten years of serene recreation among my professional
friends, the time had come for clouds to gather on the horizon. _Le due
notti affannose_, my last dramatic venture, was the source of much
profit to Sacchi. But the company, while gaining strength from actors
hired to sustain serious parts, began to degenerate in their behaviour.
Though they professed the same severe morality as formerly, I noticed
signs of change and of dissension. Differences between relatives spread
the seeds of future dissolution. The imported actors helped the theatre,
but introduced pernicious ideas into this previously happy family. They
criticised the administration of the property; accused the managers of
injustice, tyranny, even fraud; sympathised with those who thought
themselves oppressed; threw stones, and carefully concealed the hands
which launched them. Pluming themselves upon their sapience, they
contrived to persuade the troupe that the plays I gave for nothing were
not so beneficial as the latter blindly believed. They ascribed the
crowds which filled the theatre to the attraction of stage decorations
and their own spirited performance. Not unlike the fly in AEsop's fable,
they exclaimed: "Look at the dust which we are raising!" By artfully
reckoning the cost of putting my fables on the stage, and by insinuating
calumnies against the managers, they brought some of the sharers into a
state of mutiny, made them depreciate my services, and stirred up anger
and suspicion against Sacchi. Finally, they got them to think it would
be more advantageous to exchange their shares for salaries, and prepared
them for hating one another cordially.

The older and more sagacious comedians still continued to pay me court
and beg for my poetical assistance. I thought it, however, wiser to
suspend my collaboration for a year or two, without showing annoyance,
or letting it be known that I was aware of what was being said against
me. I could not take a better way of bringing them back to reason; and
my private engagements provided me with a good pretext for withdrawing
my assistance.

In the first year after my reti