others, I read and read again, with such a transport of cries, tears,
and fury, that if any one had heard me in the next room he would
surely have thought me mad. In meditating certain grand traits of
these supreme men, I often leaped to my feet, agitated and out of my
senses, and tears of grief and rage escaped me to think that I was
born in Piedmont, and in a time, and under a government, where no high
thing could be done or said; and it was almost useless to think or
feel it."

[Illustration: Vittorio Alfieri.]

These characters had a life-long fascination for Alfieri, and his
admiration of such types deeply influenced his tragedies. So great was
his scorn of kings at the time he writes of, that he despised even
those who liked them, and poor little Metastasio, who lived by the
bounty of Maria Theresa, fell under Alfieri's bitterest contempt when
in Vienna he saw his brother-poet before the empress in the imperial
gardens at Schonbrunn, "performing the customary genuflexions with a
servilely contented and adulatory face." This loathing of royalty was
naturally intensified beyond utterance in Prussia. "On entering the
states of Frederick, I felt redoubled and triplicated my hate for that
infamous military trade, most infamous and sole base of arbitrary
power." He told his minister that he would be presented only in civil
dress, because there were uniforms enough at that court, and he
declares that on beholding Frederick he felt "no emotion of wonder, or
of respect, but rather of indignation and rage.... The king addressed
me the three or four customary words; I fixed my eyes respectfully
upon his, and inwardly blessed Heaven that I had not been born
his slave; and I issued from that universal Prussian barracks ...
abhorring it as it deserved."