he young man whom I found
possessed of a pleasing countenance and engaging manners. He gave me a
polite welcome, and begged to be excused if he could not attend to me
altogether for the present, as he had to finish a song which he was
composing for a relative of the Duchess de Rovino, who was taking the
veil at the Convent of St. Claire, and the printer was waiting for the
manuscript. I told him that his excuse was a very good one, and I offered
to assist him. He then read his song, and I found it so full of
enthusiasm, and so truly in the style of Guidi, that I advised him to
call it an ode; but as I had praised all the truly beautiful passages, I
thought I could venture to point out the weak ones, and I replaced them
by verses of my own composition. He was delighted, and thanked me warmly,
inquiring whether I was Apollo. As he was writing his ode, I composed a
sonnet on the same subject, and, expressing his admiration for it he
begged me to sign it, and to allow him to send it with his poetry.

While I was correcting and recopying my manuscript, he went to his father
to find out who I was, which made the old man laugh until supper-time. In
the evening, I had the pleasure of seeing that my bed had been prepared
in the young man's chamber.

Doctor Gennaro's family was composed of this son and of a daughter
unfortunately very plain, of his wife and of two elderly, devout sisters.
Amongst the guests at the supper-table I met several literary men, and
the Marquis Galiani, who was at that time annotating Vitruvius. He had a
brother, an abbe whose acquaintance I made twenty years after, in Paris,
when he was secretary of embassy to Count Cantillana. The next day, at
supper, I was presented to the celebrated Genovesi; I had already sent
him the letter of the Archbishop of Cosenza. He spoke to me of Apostolo
Zeno and of the Abbe Conti. He remarked that it was considered a very
venial sin for a regular priest to say two masses in one day for the sake
of earning two carlini more, but that for the same sin a secular priest
would deserve to be burnt at the stake.

The nun took the veil on the following day, and Gennaro's ode and my
sonnet had the greatest success. A Neapolitan gentleman, whose name was
the same as mine, expressed a wish to know me, and, hearing that I
resided at the doctor's, he called to congratulate him on the occasion of
his feast-day, which happened to fall on the day following the ceremony
at Sainte-Claire.