nd of
almost sordid avarice showed that he was still the same person as the
boy of fifteen who had spent those three months unwashed, unkempt, in
savage squalor, by his fireside; and fits of brutal and almost maniac
violence, as when, because a hair was sharply pulled out by the roots
during the elaborate process of frizzling, he cut open with a blow of a
heavy silver candlestick the temple of his faithful valet Elia, who had
nursed him like a mother, and whose only revenge, after this fearful
scene, was to keep the two handkerchiefs steeped with his blood as a
memorial and a warning to his master.

Still, seeing nothing, learning nothing, taking interest in nothing, by
turns morosely apathetic and brutally violent, continually intriguing
with women, mercenary or depraved, Vittorio Alfieri had, at twenty-five,
less things to be proud of, but perhaps less also to regret as absolutely
dishonourable, than most young men of his time. He had never lied, never
seduced, never stooped to anything which seemed to him demeaning. He was
splashed with vice from head to foot, but he was neither unnerved nor
warped by it. A subject of constant gossip, of frequent scandal, with
his teams of half-tame horses, his flashy clothes, his furious passions
for worthless women, his moroseness and violence, he was still, so far,
a very negative character, a mere mass of rough material, out of which a
man might be made. But who should mould that matter? It is extremely
difficult to understand how it came about, as difficult almost as to
understand how a certain amount of inorganic molecules will sometimes
suddenly seem to obey an impulse from within, and become an organism,
a yeast plant, or a microscopic animal; but whether or not we succeed
in understanding the how and why of the phenomenon, the phenomenon
nevertheless took place; and this unorganised mass of passions called
Vittorio Alfieri, this chaotic thing without a higher life or a purpose
in the world, only partially sensitive, and seemingly quite impervious
to external influence, suddenly obeyed some inner impulse (perhaps some
accumulation of unnoticed effects from without), and organised itself
into a man, a thinker, and a writer.

Alfieri had always been capable of contempt for others, and largely also
of contempt for himself: blind and dull, impulsive and indifferent by
turns, he had yet felt acutely the ignominy of certain excesses, whether
of avarice, or brutality, or love (if l