After spending some weeks happily in this town, he set out on a tour through Tuscany, meaning to proceed afterwards to Genoa. He visited Florence, Siena, Volterra, and then arrived at Pisa. While walking about to see the "liens" of this town, he passed by a palace, and, perceiving that a great concourse of people were entering its gates, he looked through, and saw a large court, and the company all seated in a circle round. He asked a servant in livery, who waited, what the occasion was of so large an assembly. "That assembly," replied the man, "is a colony of the Arcadians of Rome, called the Alphean colony; that is, the colony of Alpheus, a celebrated river of Greece, which flows near the ancient Pisa of Aulis." Goldoni asked if he might make one of the audience, and the servant ushered him to a seat. After a variety of pieces of poetry had been read, he sent the servant round to ask if a stranger might be permitted to recite; and, on being answered in the affirmative, he repeated an old sonnet of his, which, with a little alteration, seemed extemporised à propos for the occasion. The Pisans, charmed at once by the compliment and the talent of the stranger, crowded round him. He made many acquaintances, was invited to their houses, and their cordial kindness seemed at one time to change the whole tenour of his life for ever. For, invited and pressed by them, and promised protection and patronage, he became a pleader once again, and for three years practised at the Pisan bar. Briefs flowed in, clients were numerous, all were satisfied, and Goldoni, content with his lot, abjured the theatre. He was too well known to be without temptations to break his resolution: actors wrote to him for plays, and he tried to refuse, and then, yielding to the desire, he wrote pieces for them in hours borrowed from sleep, and gave his days entire to his profession. Still law and the drama contended for him, and his heart was with the latter, though he tried to turn his back on her, and to devote himself to her rival. But he lost the game. A manager, named Mendebac, arrived at Pisa with a company. Goldoni went to see the representations. They acted his comedy of "La Donna di Garbo," which he considered his best piece: he had written it for a favourite actress; but she died, and he had never seen it acted. The wife of the manager was young, beautiful, and a good performer, and she took the part of the Donna di Garbo. It is difficult exactly to translate, in one word, this expression: as used by the Tuscans it means, the worthy woman--the woman whose conduct is upright and estimable. The heroine of the piece, however, deserves more the name of the cunning than the worthy; and her chief merit consists in her success. Rosaura is the daughter of a lace-maker of Pavia; and her mother's house being frequented by many of the students and professors of the university, she acquires a good deal of the scholastic pedantry of the schools.