transferred to the other division of the stage. The three admirers of the beautiful Leonarda meet each other in front of her house. They express their wishes and hopes in sonnets, the subjects of which are long-winded metaphors. As none of the party can boast of his mistress’s favour, they mutually acknowledge their ill success, and each describes a burlesque adventure, which has occurred to him during the night, in front of Leonarda’s house. One relates, that under the supposition that he was stabbing a rival, he thrust his poignard into a skin of stolen wine.[370] Meanwhile Leonarda hastily returns from church, where she has seen a young gentleman with whom she has fallen deeply in love. She immediately forms a plan to induce this gentleman, whose name is Camillo, to visit her, without either knowing who she is or whither he is conducted. The whole intrigue is managed by Leonarda’s coachman Urbano, who is at the same time the _gracioso_, or buffoon of the piece.[371] While Urbano is gone out in quest of Camillo, the three suitors, without any previous arrangement with each other, arrive disguised as dealers in books and copper-plate prints. They obtain an interview with Leonarda, and make avowals of their passion; but she receives them very unfavourably, and they are all obliged to make a rapid retreat to avoid being roughly handled by the servants. This scene is highly amusing. In the second act Camillo appears, and after long hesitation, he consents to engage in the romantic adventure. Urbano dresses him in a doctor’s cloak, and drawing the hood (_capirote_) over his eyes, he conducts him blindfold, with comic effect, through a variety of windings, to the house of Leonarda. The lady receives him in the dark. Lights are afterwards brought in, but Leonarda remains masked. A sumptuous collation is prepared, of which the young gentleman’s doubt and embarrassment will not permit him to taste a morsel. He compares himself to Alexander, when he took the suspected goblet from the hand of his physician.[372] A tender dialogue ensues, after which the hood is again drawn over the eyes of Camillo, and he is conducted from Leonarda’s house. In this manner the intrigue proceeds; but between many of the scenes, whole days, and even weeks are supposed to intervene. Leonarda and her lover become more and more intimate, though he neither knows who she is, nor where she resides. All his endeavours to discover these secrets are unavailing; and at length he begins to suspect that his unknown mistress is an old cousin of Leonarda. In the mean time the three rejected suitors, who still mix in the plot, become jealous of the coachman Urbano; and one spirited scene succeeds another until an affray occurs in which an honourable suitor of Leonarda is wounded. This accident produces the denouement. Camillo recognizes in his unknown mistress the beautiful widow with whom he was previously acquainted, and whose hand he joyfully accepts.