Leopardi abandoned the idea of flight and resigned himself as best he could to the melancholy life he was compelled to lead. His home was dull, but it was not, it could not have been, the Hell upon earth that Montefredini, one of his biographers, would have us believe. There was no domestic discord; not a trace of strife is discernible. The style of living in Monaldo's house was handsome and even luxurious, but neither his father nor his mother seem to have encouraged visitors or to have entertained as might be expected from their rank. Of Leopardi's acquaintance with Pietro Giordani they were undoubtedly apprehensive. Giordani, although a Priest, had the reputation of being a freethinker at heart, and they trembled lest he should infect the poet with his opinions. It is even suspected that many letters between the friends were intercepted. But others not only reached their destination, but have been preserved and published, and they now form a noble memorial of confidence and friendship. Leopardi was able at intervals to devote himself to his favourite pursuit of literature and he published some of his earlier poems; but their patriotic character frightened the apprehensive Monaldo. He was afraid his son would be regarded as a sympathiser with the Carbonari, and Leopardi had to distribute the copies surreptitiously and to speak of them as little as possible. He was abandoning his labours in the field of Classical Antiquity and turning his attention to original and stirring themes, full of life and actuality. But, unhappily, the more his intellect expanded, the more his health deteriorated. The blackest melancholy never left him, and it became daily intensified by his persistent habits of introspection. He complains in a letter to Giordani of utter weakness of his whole body and especially of the nerves. We hear nothing of doctors being called in to arrest the evil, nor does the patient himself seem to have asked for them. Things were allowed to drift until it was too late. "I am lying," he says in one of his letters to Giordani, "under a mountain of sorrows, and not a ray of hope can be seen." "I speak from my heart and I do not pretend," he exclaims. The great poet is already a great pessimist. In 1821 the tone of his letters became a trifle more cheerful and he was interested in the engagement of his sister Paolina, and he wrote a poem on her marriage. But the negotiations were broken off and the wedding never took place.