Milan and Mantua | Page 5

either
profession talents and knowledge were essentials, and before making a
choice he was applying himself with great success to the study of
mathematics. He utlimately decided upon the military profession, thus
imitating Achilles, who preferred the sword to the distaff, and he paid

for it with his life like the son of Peleus; though not so young, and not
through a wound inflicted by an arrow, but from the plague, which he
caught in the unhappy country in which the indolence of Europe allows
the Turks to perpetuate that fearful disease.
The distinguished appearance, the noble sentiments, the great
knowledge, and the talents of Fabris would have been turned into
ridicule in a man called Tognolo, for such is the force of prejudices,
particularly of those which have no ground to rest upon, that an
ill-sounding name is degrading in this our stupid society. My opinion is
that men who have an ill-sounding name, or one which presents an
indecent or ridiculous idea, are right in changing it if they intend to win
honour, fame, and fortune either in arts or sciences. No one can
reasonably deny them that right, provided the name they assume
belongs to nobody. The alphabet is general property, and everyone has
the right to use it for the creation of a word forming an appellative
sound. But he must truly create it. Voltaire, in spite of his genius,
would not perhaps have reached posterity under his name of Arouet,
especially amongst the French, who always give way so easily to their
keen sense of ridicule and equivocation. How could they have imagined
that a writer 'a rouet' could be a man of genius? And D'Alembert,
would he have attained his high fame, his universal reputation, if he
had been satisfied with his name of M. Le Rond, or Mr. Allround?
What would have become of Metastasio under his true name of
Trapasso? What impression would Melanchthon have made with his
name of Schwarzerd? Would he then have dared to raise the voice of a
moralist philosopher, of a reformer of the Eucharist, and so many other
holy things? Would not M. de Beauharnais have caused some persons
to laugh and others to blush if he had kept his name of Beauvit, even if
the first founder of his family had been indebted for his fortune to the
fine quality expressed by that name?
Would the Bourbeux have made as good a figure on the throne as the
Bourbons? I think that King Poniatowski ought to have abdicated the
name of Augustus, which he had taken at the time of his accession to
the throne, when he abdicated royalty. The Coleoni of Bergamo,
however, would find it rather difficult to change their name, because

they would be compelled at the same time to change their coat of arms
(the two generative glands), and thus to annihilate the glory of their
ancestor, the hero Bartholomeo.
Towards the end of autumn my friend Fabris introduced me to a family
in the midst of which the mind and the heart could find delicious food.
That family resided in the country on the road to Zero. Card- playing,
lovemaking, and practical jokes were the order of the day. Some of
those jokes were rather severe ones, but the order of the day was never
to get angry and to laugh at everything, for one was to take every jest
pleasantly or be thought a bore. Bedsteads would at night tumble down
under their occupants, ghosts were personated, diuretic pills or
sugar-plums were given to young ladies, as well as comfits who
produced certain winds rising from the netherlands, and impossible to
keep under control. These jokes would sometimes go rather too far, but
such was the spirit animating all the members of that circle; they would
laugh. I was not less inured than the others to the war of offence and
defence, but at last there was such a bitter joke played upon me that it
suggested to me another, the fatal consequences of which put a stop to
the mania by which we were all possessed.
We were in the habit of walking to a farm which was about half a
league distant by the road, but the distance could be reduced by half by
going over a deep and miry ditch across which a narrow plank was
thrown, and I always insisted upon going that way, in spite of the fright
of the ladies who always trembled on the narrow bridge, although I
never failed to cross the first, and to offer my hand to help them over.
One fine day, I crossed first so as to give them courage, but suddenly,
when I reached the middle of the plank, it gave way under me, and
there I was