scene in 'Don
Giovanni,' where Leporello personates the Don and deceives Donna
Elvira. Goldoni had often noticed a beautiful young lady at church
and on the public drives: she was attended by a waiting-maid, who soon
perceived that her mistress had excited the young man's admiration,
and who promised to befriend him in his suit. Goldoni was told to
repair at night to the palace of his mistress, and to pour his passion
forth beneath her window. Impatiently he waited for the trysting
hour, conned his love-sentences, and gloried in the romance of the
adventure. When night came, he found the window, and a veiled figure
of a lady in the moonlight, whom he supposed at once to be his
mistress. Her he eloquently addressed in the true style of Romeo's
rapture, and she answered him. Night after night this happened,
but sometimes he was a little troubled by a sound of ill-suppressed
laughter interrupting the _tete-a-tete_. Meanwhile Teresa,
the waiting-maid, received from his hands costly presents for her
mistress, and made him promises on her part in exchange. As she proved
unable to fulfil them, Goldoni grew suspicious, and at last discovered
that the veiled figure to whom he had poured out his tale of love was
none other than Teresa, and that the laughter had proceeded from
her mistress, whom the faithless waiting-maid regaled at her lover's
expense. Thus ended this ridiculous matter. Goldoni was not, however,
cured by his experience. One other love-affair rendered Udine too hot
to hold him, and in consequence of a third he had to fly from Venice
just when he was beginning to flourish there. At length he married
comfortably and suitably, settling down into a quiet life with a woman
whom, if he did not love her with passion, he at least respected and
admired. Goldoni, in fact, had no real passion in his nature.

Alfieri, on the other hand, was given over to volcanic ebullitions of
the most ungovernable hate and affection, joy and sorrow. The chains
of love which Goldoni courted so willingly, Alfieri regarded with
the greatest shyness. But while Goldoni healed his heart of all its
bruises in a week or so, the tragic poet bore about him wounds that
would not close. He enumerates three serious passions which possessed
his whole nature, and at times deprived him almost of his reason. A
Dutch lady first won his heart, and when he had to leave her, Alfieri
suffered so intensely that he never opened his lips during the course
of a lo