dy for
publication. On thinking it over now, it strikes me that I was guilty of
great impertinence in thus bringing out and publishing with undaunted
assurance my little novel among all those literary big-wigs; I who had
never done or written anything before. But it was successful; and this
is an answer to every objection.

The day I carried my bundle of manuscript to San Pietro all' Orto, and,
as Berni expresses it,--

"--ritrovato
Un che di stampar opere lavora,
Dissi, Stampami questa alla malora!"

(--having
Discovered one, a publisher by trade,
'Print me this book, bad luck to it!' I said.)

I was in a still greater funk than on the two previous occasions. But I
had yet to experience the worst I ever felt in the whole course of my
life, and that was on the day of publication; when I went out in the
morning, and read my illustrious name placarded in large letters on the
street walls! I felt blinded by a thousand sparks. Now indeed _alea
jacta erat_, and my fleet was burnt to ashes.

This great fear of the public may, with good-will, be taken for modesty;
but I hold that at bottom it is downright vanity. Of course I am
speaking of people endowed with a sufficient dose of talent and
common-sense; with fools, on the contrary, vanity takes the shape of
impudent self-confidence. Hence all the daily published amount of
nonsense; which would convey a strange idea of us to Europe, if it were
not our good fortune that Italian is not much understood abroad. As
regards our internal affairs, the two excesses are almost equally
noxious. In Parliament, for instance, the first, those of the timidly
vain genus, might give their opinion a little oftener with general
advantage; while if the others, the impudently vain, were not always
brawling, discussions would be more brief and rational, and public
business better and more quickly dispatched. The same reflection applies
to other branches--to journalism, literature, society, etc.; for vanity
is the bad weed which chokes up our political field; and as it is a
plant of hardy growth, blooming among us all the year round, it is just
as well to be on our guard.

Timid vanity was terribly at work within me the day 'Fieramosca' was
published. For the first twenty-four hours it was impossible to learn
anything; for even the most zealous require at least a day to form some
idea of a book. Next morning, on first going out, I encountered a friend
of mine,