Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
To these we may add Galiani, the smallest, the wittiest, and the most delightful of abbes, whose piercing insight and Machiavellian subtlety lent a piquant charm to the stories with which for hours he used to enliven this choice company; Caraccioli, gay, simple, ingenuous, full of Neapolitan humor, rich in knowledge and observation, luminous with intelligence and sparkling with wit; and the Comte de Crentz, the learned and versatile Swedish minister, to whom nature had "granted the gift of expressing and painting in touches of fire all that had struck his imagination or vividly seized his soul."
She has wisely chosen a husband old enough to be her father; he is a friend of mine." "That's not true," cried Leonilda, rushing to my arms, "she will think you are really old, and I am sorry." "Is your mother an elderly woman?" "She's a charming Woman," said the duke, "full of wit, and not thirty-eight yet." "What has she got to do with Galiani?"
In the evening, I had the pleasure of seeing that my bed had been prepared in the young man's chamber. Doctor Gennaro's family was composed of this son and of a daughter unfortunately very plain, of his wife and of two elderly, devout sisters. Amongst the guests at the supper-table I met several literary men, and the Marquis Galiani, who was at that time annotating Vitruvius.
"You are as pretty as you were twenty-six years ago, and if it had not been for the Abbe Galiani I should have left Naples without seeing you." I found Leonilda had developed into a perfect beauty. She was at that time twenty-three years old. Her husband's presence was no constraint upon her; she received me with open arms, and put me completely at my ease.
"As for curiosity, that vice which the Abbe Galiani held to be unknown to animals, but which the more astute Voltaire detected in every little dog that he saw peering out of the window of its master's coach, it is the ruling passion of the feline breast.
Since Voltaire had hailed her as the "Northern Semiramis," no adulation was enough to translate their enthusiasm: the "charms of Cleopatra," for example, were united in her to "the soul of Brutus." La Harpe, Marmontel, Volney, Galiani, and many others fallen silent in these days were sharers in her bounty.
She does not know Mme. de Sévigné, whom she praises, and only esteems Buffon and Thomas. She calculates all things; she sought men of letters only as trumpets to blow in honor of her husband. He never said a word; that was not very recreating." Galiani leaves a different impression: "There is not a Friday that I do not go to your house en esprit.
The Abbe de la Ville told him that Voltaire had complained that his Henriade had been translated into Neapolitan verse in such sort that it excited laughter. "Voltaire is wrong," said Galiani, "for the Neapolitan dialect is of such a nature that it is impossible to write verses in it that are not laughable. And why should he be vexed; he who makes people laugh is sure of being beloved.
And what the same Galiani gave as a definition of sublime oratory may be applied to its dexterity of phrase: "It is the art of saying everything without being clapt in the Bastile, in a country where it is forbidden to say anything." Wit must also have the quality of unexpectedness. "Sometimes," says Barrow, "an affected simplicity, sometimes a presumptuous bluntness, gives it being.
"She has the habit of detesting those who are unhappy," said the witty Abbe Galiani, "for she does not wish to be so, even by the sight of the unhappiness of others. She has an impressionable heart; she is old; she is well; she wishes to preserve her health and her tranquillity. As soon as she learns that I am happy she will love me to folly." But her generosity was exceptional.
Word Of The Day