of economy, literary plans, and so forth, bred in me
a trick of contracting my forehead and frowning, which, combined with my
slow gait, taciturnity, and preference for solitary places, won me the
reputation among those who were not my familiar friends of being a
surly, sullen, unapproachable fellow, perhaps even an enemy of mankind.
Many who have come upon me, pondering, with knitted brows and gloomy
downcast eyes, will have suspected that I was planning how to kill an
enemy, while really I was constructing the plot of my _Green Bird_.

In the society of people new to me, I always appeared drowsy, stupid,
silent, and lethargic, until I had studied their characters and ways of
thinking. Afterwards I turned out quite the opposite; not, however, that
I may not have remained a fool; but I was one of those fools who utter
laconisms, less tiresome to the company than interminable flowery
speeches.

I was not miserly, because I always loathed that vice, nor prodigal, for
the sole reason that I was not rich. I cannot form any conception of the
influence which wealth might have exercised over my imagination and my
moral nature, both being doubtless not more free from foibles than in
the case of other men and women.

I might have earned considerably by my numerous published works, but I
made a present of them all to comedians and booksellers, or to persons
who sought to profit by giving them to the press. Perhaps I shall not
be believed when I say that I invariably refused such profit for myself.
Yet this is the fact. Some who are aware that I was far from rich, will
take me to task for my indifference to gain; they will attribute my
generosity to vainglory or to stupidity. I had, however, my own reasons,
which were as follows. My writings were always marked by freedom,
boldness, pungency, and satire upon public manners; at the same time,
moral and playful in expression. Being unpaid, they gained the advantage
of a certain decent independence, which secured for them toleration,
appreciation, and applause on their own merits. Had I been paid for
them, they would have lost their prestige; my antagonists might have
stigmatised them as a parcel of insufferable mercenary calumnies, and I
should have been exposed to universal odium.

In addition to this: there is no degradation for men of letters in Italy
worse than that of writing for hire in the employ of publishers or of
our wretched comedians. The publishers begin by caressing