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It is one of the things which grate upon one most in Alfieri's character, and which show that however much he might be cast and have chiselled himself in antique heroic form he was yet made of the same stuff as his contemporaries, to find that he and his friend Caluso merely amused themselves immensely at this proposal of marriage, and concocted a dutiful letter to the old Countess explaining that matrimony was not at present in his plans.
Among these papers was found a short letter, undated, addressed "To the friend I have left behind, Tommaso di Caluso, at Turin," and which ran as follows:
But in the following summer of the year 1787, shortly after he had returned to Colmar with the Countess, and had welcomed as a guest Tommaso di Caluso, his greatest friend since Gori's death, he suddenly broke down under a terrific attack of dysentery.
But all this was very lukewarm sympathy; and except from his two great friends, Francesco Gori and Tommaso di Caluso, a difficult-tempered man like Alfieri could receive only lukewarmness. Now what he required was sympathy, admiration, adoration, of the most burning description. This was possible, towards such a man, only from a woman.
The Abate di Caluso, the greatest friend he had, after Gori, was summoned from Turin to console the Countess and put all papers in order. Alfieri's will, made out in 1799, left all his books and MSS., and whatever small property he possessed, to the Countess Louise d'Albany, leaving her to dispose of them entirely according to her good pleasure.
On leaving Rome Alfieri went to Siena, where, years before, when he had come light-hearted and bent only upon literary fame, to learn Tuscan, he had been introduced into a little circle of men and women whom he faithfully loved, and to that Francesco Gori who shared with Tommaso di Caluso the rather trying honour of being his bosom friend.
From this vomitory the old glacier poured into the plains of the Po that wonderful accumulation of mud, gravel, boulders, and large erratics, which extend for 15 miles from above Ivrea to below Caluso and which when seen in profile from Turin have the aspect of a chain of hills.
Soon after, as Mme. d'Albany later informed his friend Caluso, Alfieri, finding that his digestion had become so bad as to produce inability to work after meals, began systematically to diminish his already extremely sober allowance of food; while, at the same time, he did not diminish the exercise, walking, riding, and driving, which he found necessary to keep himself in spirits.
So little could she understand the muddy things of this world, that in 1789, when Alfieri was publicly living with Mme. d'Albany at Colmar, the Countess Alfieri sent him, through his friend Caluso, the suggestion of a match which she had greatly at heart, between him and a young lady of Asti, "fifteen or sixteen years old, without any faults, such as he would certainly like, cultivated, docile, and clever."
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