ty, and the papers relating to several suits between his
ancestors and ours. At last two enormous chests, full of musty writings,
were delivered at the Magistracy of the Avvogaria. Perhaps my
adversaries thought to dash my spirits and damp my ardour by this ocean
of pages which had to be explored. If so, they were mistaken. I procured
one of those licenses, which are technically called courtesies, from
Signor Daniele Zanchi, the defendant's advocate, to study the documents
at his chambers, and set myself down with imperturbable phlegm to peruse
millions of lines in antique characters, faded, half-effaced,
semi-Gothic, and for the most part hieroglyphical. I selected those
which seemed to the purpose, and had forty-two volumes of transcripts
filled at my cost by Signor Zanchi's copyists.

Painful circumstances leave ineffaceable impressions on the memory. The
examination of those vast masses of manuscript, word by word and letter
by letter, so different from delightful literature in prose or verse,
taxed every nerve and fibre. I well remember that my study of them
lasted over more than two months, in the dead of a hard snowy winter.
Signor Zanchi, taking pity on my shivering wretchedness, kindly
furnished me with a brazier of live coals; and yet I thought, what with
the irksome labour and the cold, that I should have to breathe my last
between the walls of the fortress of my enemies.

I shall not weary my readers with a detailed account of this tedious
lawsuit. My brother Almoro, whose heart was always in the right place,
contributed to the expenses according to his means. My brother
Francesco, remaining a wary economist, refused to exceed an annual
payment of 150 _lire_ during the progress of the suit. My brother
Gasparo only lent his name and assent. The following anecdote is
characteristic of his easy-going, popularity-loving temperament. Some
gentlemen, friends and supporters of the Marquis, asked him with serious
faces: "What the devil is this annoyance you are causing Marchese
Terzi?" To which he shrugged his shoulders and answered: "I know nothing
about the matter. They are devices of my brother Carlo, a litigious
fellow, who thinks that he is in the right here." He did not mean, I
fully believe, to shun responsibility and odium by shifting the blame to
my shoulders. This answer was only of a piece with the pacific indolence
which made him bear infinite wretchedness in his own home.

In the course of two years I