Massimilla Doni

Massimilla Doni

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Title: Massimilla Doni
Author: Honore de Balzac
Release Date: March 12, 2005 [EBook #1811]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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Produced by Dagny; and John Bickers

MASSIMILLA DONI
BY
HONORE DE BALZAC

Translated by Clara Bell and James Waring

DEDICATION
To Jacques Strunz.
MY DEAR STRUNZ:--I should be ungrateful if I did not set your

name at the head of one of the two tales I could never have written but
for your patient kindness and care. Accept this as my grateful
acknowledgment of the readiness with which you tried--perhaps not
very successfully--to initiate me into the mysteries of musical
knowledge. You have at least taught me what difficulties and what
labor genius must bury in those poems which procure us transcendental
pleasures. You have also afforded me the satisfaction of laughing more
than once at the expense of a self-styled connoisseur.
Some have taxed me with ignorance, not knowing that I have taken
counsel of one of our best musical critics, and had the benefit of your
conscientious help. I have, perhaps, been an inaccurate amanuensis. If
this were the case, I should be the traitorous translator without knowing
it, and I yet hope to sign myself always one of your friends.
DE BALZAC.

MASSIMILLA DONI

As all who are learned in such matters know, the Venetian aristocracy
is the first in Europe. Its _Libro d'Oro_ dates from before the Crusades,
from a time when Venice, a survivor of Imperial and Christian Rome
which had flung itself into the waters to escape the Barbarians, was
already powerful and illustrious, and the head of the political and
commercial world.
With a few rare exceptions this brilliant nobility has fallen into utter
ruin. Among the gondoliers who serve the English--to whom history
here reads the lesson of their future fate--there are descendants of long
dead Doges whose names are older than those of sovereigns. On some
bridge, as you glide past it, if you are ever in Venice, you may admire
some lovely girl in rags, a poor child belonging, perhaps, to one of the
most famous patrician families. When a nation of kings has fallen so
low, naturally some curious characters will be met with. It is not
surprising that sparks should flash out among the ashes.
These reflections, intended to justify the singularity of the persons who
figure in this narrative, shall not be indulged in any longer, for there is
nothing more intolerable than the stale reminiscences of those who
insist on talking about Venice after so many great poets and petty
travelers. The interest of the tale requires only this record of the most

startling contrast in the life of man: the dignity and poverty which are
conspicuous there in some of the men as they are in most of the houses.
The nobles of Venice and of Geneva, like those of Poland in former
times, bore no titles. To be named Quirini, Doria, Brignole, Morosini,
Sauli, Mocenigo, Fieschi, Cornaro, or Spinola, was enough for the
pride of the haughtiest. But all things become corrupt. At the present
day some of these families have titles.
And even at a time when the nobles of the aristocratic republics were
all equal, the title of Prince was, in fact, given at Genoa to a member of
the Doria family, who were sovereigns of the principality of Amalfi,
and a similar title was in use at Venice, justified by ancient inheritance
from Facino Cane, Prince of Varese. The Grimaldi, who assumed
sovereignty, did not take possession of Monaco till much later.
The last Cane of the elder branch vanished from Venice thirty years
before the fall of the Republic, condemned for various crimes more or
less criminal. The branch on whom this nominal principality then
devolved, the Cane Memmi, sank into poverty during the fatal period
between 1796 and 1814. In the twentieth year of the present century
they were represented only by a young man whose name was Emilio,
and an old palace which is regarded as one of the chief ornaments of
the Grand Canal. This son of Venice the Fair had for his whole fortune
this useless Palazzo, and fifteen hundred francs a year derived from a
country house on the Brenta, the last plot of the lands his family had
formerly owned on terra firma, and sold to the Austrian government.
This little income