love by instinct, inclination, and hereditary
tradition.

This does not mean that they were not eager to get lovers who could
support them on the stage, or who would be likely to marry them, and
withdraw them from a calling which they always professed, hypocritically
I believe, to abhor.

In what concerned myself, I looked upon their love-intrigues as duels of
wit and comic passages, which furnished me amusement. Closely related to
each other, and ambitious for advancement in their art, they regarded me
as a bright shining star, worshipped by the leading members of the
troupe, and capable of securing them success upon the stage. Their
mutual rivalry, which I made use of for their own advantage, the profit
of the company, and the success of my dramatic works, turned their
brains. They would have done anything to gain my heart. Possibly some
matrimonial projects entered into their calculations; but on this point
I was always careful to disabuse them in the clearest terms. Meanwhile,
their attentions, protests, fits of rage, jealousies, and tears on my
account had all the scenic illusion of an overwhelming passion.

In the cities where they passed the spring and summer, the same comedy
was re-enacted with a score of lovers. On their return to Venice, the
correspondence which they carried on with these admirers, and which they
vainly strove to hide from me, betrayed their inconstancy. By
cross-examination and adroit suggestive questionings, I always brought
them to make a clean breast of it, and their avowals furnished me with
matter for exquisite amusement. They protested that the letters they
received were written by young merchants or rich citizens, sometimes by
gentlemen of the Lombard towns, who entertained the liveliest intentions
of an honourable kind, and were only waiting for the death of an uncle
or a father or a mother, all upon the point of dying of apoplexy or
consumption or dropsy, to offer them their hands and fortunes. Finally,
in order to reveal the sincerity of their hearts, when lying could no
longer help them, they offered me these precious epistles. Probably they
hoped to excite jealousy in my own breast. This opened a new chapter of
diversion. I read the love-letters, and found that the vaunted admirers
were either bombastic lady-killers or romancers or libertines, or
sometimes, to my astonishment, dull Lombard hypocrites upon the scent of
goatish pleasure.

I enlightened them, so far as this was p