Such, abridged in a few passages, is the memorable letter which reveals the troubles of Leopardi's mind. It is a curious medley of wounded vanity, of imaginary wrongs and of genuine grievances. It is passing strange that Leopardi should have been so anxious about his future. He was his father's eldest son, and as such, heir to ample, if somewhat encumbered, estates. I think he mistook his own feelings, and what he thought solicitude for his livelihood, was in reality the agony of unsatisfied ambition. The fatal mistake that his father made was to coop up so ardent and aspiring a young man in the restricted routine of a somewhat cloistral home. Monaldo and Adelaide had a genuine fear of their children becoming contaminated by undesirable associates; and to avert this evil, neither the poet nor his brothers were allowed to go out unaccompanied. The young prisoners naturally resented this surveillance, especially Leopardi who, at a time when his literary renown was spreading all over Italy, was still under the restrictions of the nursery. "Everybody treats me as a child," he writes, "except my parents who treat me as a baby." No wonder that flight had its romance and its attractions; but where would he have gone to if he had run away? Doubtless, the utter inability to answer this question made him abandon the idea. Carlo and Paolina noticed something peculiar in his demeanour; they watched him, and we may safely assume that their affection extorted from him his secret, that he showed them the letter intended for his father and that they persuaded him to abandon the wild and desperate scheme. It would have been well if the letter had been burnt, and the whole unhappy episode consigned to oblivion. It makes the poet appear wild and visionary and the father a more obdurate tyrant than he really was. He utterly failed to enter into the ideas of his illustrious son, and posterity has censured him with a harshness he was far from deserving.