In Paris Alfieri bought the principal Italian authors, which he
afterwards carried everywhere with him on his travels; but he says
that he made very little use of them, having neither the will nor the
power to apply his mind to anything. In fact, he knew very little
Italian, most of the authors in his collection were strange to him,
and at the age of twenty-two he had read nothing whatever of Dante,
Petrarch, Tasso, Boccaccio, or Machiavelli.

He made a journey into Spain, among other countries, where he admired
the Andalusian horses, and bored himself as usual with what interests
educated people; and he signalized his stay at Madrid by a murderous
outburst of one of the worst tempers in the world. One night his
servant Elia, in dressing his hair, had the misfortune to twitch one
of his locks in such a way as to give him a slight pain; on which
Alfieri leaped to his feet, seized a heavy candlestick, and without
a word struck the valet such a blow upon his temple that the blood
gushed out over his face, and over the person of a young Spanish
gentleman who had been supping with Alfieri. Elia sprang upon his
master, who drew his sword, but the Spaniard after great ado quieted
them both; "and so ended this horrible encounter," says Alfieri, "for
which I remained deeply afflicted and ashamed. I told Elia that he
would have done well to kill me; and he was the man to have done it,
being a palm taller than myself, who am very tall, and of a strength
and courage not inferior to his height. Two hours later, his wound
being dressed and everything put in order, I went to bed, leaving the
door from my room into Elia's open as usual, without listening to the
Spaniard, who warned me not thus to invite a provoked and outraged man
to vengeance: I called to Elia, who had already gone to bed, that
he could, if he liked and thought proper, kill me that night, for I