of Marcellus, which the sulky young noble could not comprehend. In
Ferrara he did not remember that it was the city of that divine
Ariosto whose poem was the first that came into his hands, and
which he had now read in part with infinite pleasure. "But my poor
intellect," he says, "was then sleeping a most sordid sleep, and every
day, as far as regards letters, rusted more and more. It is true,
however, that with respect to knowledge of the world and of men I
constantly learned not a little, without taking note of it, so many
and diverse were the phases of life and manners that I daily beheld."
At Florence he visited the galleries and churches with much disgust
and no feeling, for the beautiful, especially in painting, his
eyes being very dull to color. "If I liked anything better, it was
sculpture a little, and architecture yet a little more"; and it is
interesting to note how all his tragedies reflect these preferences,
in their lack of color and in their sculpturesque sharpness of
outline.

From Italy he passed as restlessly into France, yet with something
of a more definite intention, for he meant to frequent the French
theater. He had seen a company of French players at Turin, and had
acquainted himself with the most famous French tragedies and comedies,
but with no thought of writing tragedies of his own. He felt no
creative impulse, and he liked the comedies best, though, as he says,
he was by nature more inclined to tears than to laughter. But he does
not seem to have enjoyed the theater much in Paris, a city for which
he conceived at once the greatest dislike, he says, "on account of the
squalor and barbarity of the buildings, the absurd and pitiful pomp
of the few houses that affected to be palaces, the filthiness and
gothicism of the churches, the vandalic structure of the theaters of
that time, and the many and many and many disagreeable objects that