absence of three years. He took a magnificent house in the Piazza di
San Carlo, furnished it sumptuously, and commenced leading a merry life
with about a dozen friends, who formed a society, which met at his house
every week. This Society was governed by strict rules, one of which was
that all should contribute something in writing for their reciprocal
amusement; these contributions being placed in a chest, of which the
president for the time being kept the key, and read aloud by him at
their meetings. They were all written in French, and Alfieri mentions
one of his which was very successful. It described the Deity at the last
judgment demanding from every soul an account of itself, and the
characters he drew were all those of well-known individuals, both male
and female, in Turin.

It was not long before he fell in love for the third time, the object of
his passion now being a lady some years older than himself, and of
somewhat doubtful reputation. For the space of nearly two years she
exercised unbounded dominion over him. Feeling that he could not support
the fetters of Venus and of Mars at one and the same time, he with some
little difficulty obtained permission to throw up his commission in the
army.

While attending at his mistress's bedside, during an illness by which
she was attacked in January, 1744, the idea first struck him of writing
a dramatic sketch. He wrote it without the slightest plan, in the form
of a dialogue between three persons, called respectively, Photinus,
Lachesis, and Cleopatra. He gives a specimen of it in a note, and it is
certainly not of the very highest order of merit. On the recovery of the
lady he placed it under the cushion of her couch, where it remained
forgotten for a year, and thus were the first fruits of his tragic
genius brooded over, as it were, by the lady and all who chanced to sit
upon the couch.

At length he threw off the chains which had so long bound him. The
exertion was, however, so great that he was actually obliged to get his
servant Elia to tie him to his chair, that he might not quit the house.
When his friends came to see him, he dropped his dressing gown over the
bandages, so that his forced imprisonment was not perceived. His first
appearance in public was at the carnival of 1775, where he dressed
himself up as Apollo, and recited at the public ball at the theatre a
masquerade he had composed on the subject of love, twanging a guitar
vigorously all the time