ic readings of his
plays; trying to persuade himself that his object in so doing was to
judge, from the expression of face and even more from the restlessness
or quiescence of his listeners on their chairs, how his work might
affect the mixed audience of a theatre; but admitting in his heart of
hearts that the old desire to be remarked had as much to do with these
exhibitions as with the six-horse gallops which used to astonish the
people of Turin and Florence.

But something better soon offered itself. The Duke Grimaldi had had a
small theatre constructed in the Spanish palace, his residence as
Ambassador from the Catholic King, and a small company of high-born
amateurs had been playing in it translations of French comedies and
tragedies. To these ladies and gentlemen Alfieri offered his _Antigone_,
which was accepted with fervour. The beautiful and majestic Duchess
of Zagarolo was to act the part of the heroine; her brother and
sister-in-law, the Duke and Duchess of Ceri, respectively the parts of
Haemon and of Argia, while the character of Creon, the villain of the
piece, was reserved for Alfieri himself. The performance of _Antigone_
was a great solemnity. The magnificent rooms of the Spanish Embassy were
crowded with the fashionable world of Rome, which, in the year 1782,
included priests and princes of the Church quite as much as painted
ladies and powdered cavaliers. A contemporary diary, kept by the page of
the Princess Colonna, a certain Abate Benedetti, enables us to form some
notion of the assembly. Foremost among the ladies were the two rival
beauties, equally famous for their conquests in the ecclesiastical as
well as the secular nobility, the Princess Santacroce and the Princess
Altieri, vying with each other in the magnificence of their diamonds and
of their lace, and each upon the arm of a prince of the Church who had
the honour of being her orthodox _cavaliere servente_; the Princess
Altieri led in by Cardinal Giovan Francesco Albani, the very gallant and
art-loving nephew of Winckelmann's Cardinal Alessandro; the Princess
Santacroce escorted by the French Ambassador Cardinal de Bernis, the
amiable society rhymester of Mme. de Pompadour, whom Frederick the Great
had surnamed _Babet la bouquetiere_. In the front row sat the wife of
the Senator Rezzonico, who, in virtue of being the niece of the late
Pope Clement XIII., affected an almost royal pomp, and by her side sat
the wittiest and most literary of t