The transfer, however, was not completed without a good deal of annoyance; and Alfieri was irritated, at one time, into making a declaration, that, if his brother-in-law would not receive the donation, he must the count's abandonment of his whole property; and that he would resign his claim to every possession rather than be fettered by the laws attendant upon keeping it. In the exaltation of his imagination, he almost imagined that this latter offer would be acted on; and, finding himself reduced to merely a few thousand sequins of ready money, he fell into his second fit of avarice, selling his horses, and all his superfluous plate, furniture, and even dress, renouncing the Sardinian uniform, to which he had adhered, from boyish vanity, even after quitting the service. He spent a good deal of money in books; but this was his sole expense; while his abstemiousness of living, directed by economy, became of the most rigid kind. Thus, even in extremes, resolved never to marry, resolved to be an author, he completed sacrifices, which a thousand circumstances might afterwards have caused him to regret, but which, he assures us, he never for a moment repented. He did not confide the secret of this change in his affairs to the countess until it was past recal; for, as their ultimate effect was to render their union more stable and permanent, he felt that she might consider it right, as a mark of her disinterestedness, to oppose them. When all was over, her blame was of no avail, and she forgave the mystery he had practised. These various annoyances, joined to the perturbations of love, and the ardour of his literary application, occasioned an illness from which he only recovered when the season of summer brought that healthiness of feeling, that lightness of spirit, and that energy for composition, which summer and its heats always imparted to his constitution. During this summer, Alfieri, as he tells us, "in a frantic delirium of a love of freedom," wrote his tragedy of the "Pazzi," and that of "Mary Stuart" (Mary Queen of Scots); the latter at the request of the countess of Albany. During the following year he completed these and made the first sketch of "Rosmunda," "Ottavia," and "Timoleon." Since his tragedies have become so numerous, and many of his best are written, it will be as well to glance over them, and to give some account of his progress and success in an art to which he devoted his life and fortune.