His eyesight began to fail; he was often indisposed, and no longer
inclined to move about and pitch his tent in various cities. A post as
Italian teacher at the court brought him much in contact with the royal
family. It strikes the readers of the Memoirs with some amazement
to see how Goldoni could live in that society, could hear the talk of
intellectual Paris, and not be aware upon the brink of how frightful a
precipice all French society then hovered. He actually held the king
to be adored by his subjects, and these subjects as happy as it was
possible for a people to be, well ruled, kindly governed. The narrative
of his life ends at the age of eighty, six years before his death, two
before the outbreak of the Revolution. We have not, therefore, his
impression of the storm when it broke. We only know, alas! that this
light-hearted, gay old child--for a child he remained to the end--died
in misery, involved in the general ruin and wreck that overwhelmed all
France within that brief space of time. It was, in fact, his nephew who
stood between him and starvation; for with the king's deposition had
vanished the pension allowed to the aged Italian dramatist. A day after
his death a decree of the National Convention restored it to him for
the term of his days. The proposed gift came too late, but it honours
those who voted it and him who pleaded for it, no less a person than
Joseph-Marie Chenier, the poet. When the orator learned that the
benevolence he invoked could no longer help its object, he again pleaded
for the octogenarian, or rather that the pension should be passed on to
the faithful wife in whose arms Goldoni had passed away. "She is old,"
said Chenier, "she is seventy-six, and he has left her no heritage save
his illustrious name, his virtues, and his poverty." It is pleasant to
learn that this request was conceded to by the Convention. The French,
to their honour be it said, are ever ready to pay tribute to genius.

So sad, so dark, so gloomy, was the end of that gay, bright spirit,
Italy's greatest and most prolific comic author. To sum up his merits
in a few words is no easy task. It is doubtful whether we should rank
him among the geniuses of the world. On the plea of intelligence he
certainly cannot claim this rank; his intellectual perceptions might
even be called mediocre, as his Memoirs amply prove, but he had a gift,
a certain knack of catching the exterior qualities of character and
reproducing them