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Updated: June 11, 2025
He assured us that Steffani had never entered his house, and therefore he could not conceive by what spell, speaking to his daughter only at night and from the street under the window, he had succeeded in seducing her to such an extent as to make her leave her home alone, on foot, two days after he had left himself in his post-chaise.
I gave my anxious mistress an exact account of all the conversation. She was very impatient for my coming, and wept tears of joy when I repeated her father's words of forgiveness; but when I told her that nobody knew of Steffani having entered her chamber, she fell on her knees and thanked God.
"I have not seen Steffani for six months, sir," I said to the count, "but I promise you to kill him in a duel as soon as he returns." "You shall not do it," answered the young count, very coolly, "unless he kills me first." "Gentlemen," exclaimed M. de Bragadin, "I can assure you that you will neither of you fight a duel with him, for Steffani is dead." "Dead!" said the count.
People may say what they please on that subject but hope is in fact nothing but a deceitful flatterer accepted by reason only because it is often in need of palliatives. Happy are those men who, to enjoy life to the fullest extent, require neither hope nor foresight. In the morning, recollecting the sentence of death which I had passed on Steffani, I felt somewhat embarrassed about it.
The last and most serious motive which caused the despair of Steffani, who is still alive, remained a mystery for everybody. My Memoirs will raise the veil when no one will care anything about it. The count and his son were, of course, greatly surprised, and the event made them still more desirous of discovering the young lady.
We can learn from them the state of dramatic music at that time in Berlin, Leipsic, Brunswick, Hanover, Koethen; we can form from them some correct idea of the powers of Keiser, Steffani, Graupner, Schieferdecker, Telemann, Gruenwald, and others, then in possession of the lyric stage; we can thus estimate the influences which led Handel from the path that Bach so successfully followed, into that which he pursued with equal success; and though the amount of matter relating to him personally be small, much that throws light upon his early life still remains inaccessible to the English reader.
Through Prince Ernest, and Kielmansegge, Handel was recommended to the court of Hanover; the Duke of Manchester gave him a pressing invitation to England. Music in Hanover was under the direction of an Italian, Agostino Steffani, who was not only a musician but priest and diplomatist as well.
Our conversation having turned to the extraordinary absence of Steffani, she said that her father must necessarily believe her to be hiding with him somewhere. "He must have found out," she added, "that I was in the habit of conversing with him every night from my window, and he must have heard of my having embarked for Venice on board the Ferrara barge.
I am in your hands, and I feel certain that I shall have no cause to repent it." I needed all she had just told' me to confirm me in the interest which I had felt in her from the first moment. I told her unsparingly that Steffani had seduced and abandoned her of malice aforethought, and that she ought to think of him only to be revenged of his perfidy.
An individual wearing a mask was waiting for her, joined her at once, and they both disappeared without leaving any trace of their whereabouts." "Very likely it was Steffani waiting there for her." "No, for he is short, and the man with the mask was tall. Besides, I have heard that Steffani had left Venice two days before the arrival of my daughter.
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