r in that big
palace of the Cancelleria. Fortunately there was no Cardinal York in the
Cancelleria, or at least only rarely; but instead only the beautiful
blonde woman with the dark hazel eyes, whom Alfieri spoke of as his
"lady," and, somewhat later, "as the sweet half of himself," and in
whose speech Alfieri was never Alfieri, or Vittorio, or the Count, but
merely "the poet," so completely had these strange, self-modelling,
unconsciously-attitudinising lovers, arrayed themselves and their love
according to the pattern of Dante and Petrarch.

To the Countess, we may be sure, Alfieri never failed to give a most
elaborate account of his day's work, nor to read to her whatever scenes
of his plays he had blocked out, in prose, or worked up in verse. By 11
o'clock, he tells us, he was always back in his solitary little villa on
the Esquiline.

But this, although it is probably correct with regard to his visits to
Mme. d'Albany, with whom consideration for gossip prevented his staying
much after ten at night, must not be taken as the invariable rule; for
Alfieri, devoted as he was to his lady, by no means neglected other
society. He was finishing his allotted number of tragedies, and, as the
solemn moment of publication approached, he began to be tormented with
that same desire to display his work to others, to hear their praises
even if false, to understand their opinion even if unfavourable, which
came, by gusts, as one of the passions of his life. Rome was at that
time, like every Italian town, full of literary academies, conventicles
of very small intellectual fry meeting in private drawing-rooms or at
coffee-houses, and swayed by the overlordship of the famous Arcadia,
which had now sunk into being a huge club to which every creature who
scribbled, or daubed, or strummed, or had a coach-and-pair, or a bad
tongue, or a pretty face, or a title, belonged without further claims.
There were also several houses of women who affected intelligence or
culture, having no claims to beauty or fashion; and foremost among these,
but differing from them by the real originality and culture of the lady
of the house, the charm of her young daughter, and the superior quality
of the conversation and music to be enjoyed there, was the house of a
Signora Maria Pizzelli, of all women in Rome the one to whom, after the
Countess of Albany, Alfieri showed himself most assiduous. In her house
and in many others Alfieri began to give almost publ