It was while he lived in wild Dalmatia that Gozzi had first revealed to him his own dramatic genius. His protector there was a man of letters, who lent him books and encouraged him to exercise his literary taste and talent in scribbling sketches of character, poetical essays and such things as usually serve as the magnetic conductor between a youth and the people around him, whom he hardly knows. The dramatic troupe in Zara was composed of young Venetian officers only. To amuse the governor and his suite they distributed among themselves the different roles of men and women, and upon some given theme they improvised those comedies which are so much to the taste of Italians. What a chance there was for individual talent to reveal itself! Gozzi created spontaneously his own role--it was that of an Illyrian chambermaid--and in it he used the Dalmatian _patois_ with such dexterity, he railed at feminine foibles with so much _finesse_, and, using recent social scandals, he touched the whole with such apt satire, that he had an immense success. The role of the fictitious chambermaid won universal admiration. Ladies of rank inquired who was that inimitable young man, and expressed the wish to have presented to them the amateur actor. Their disappointment was unconcealed upon finding him reserved in manner, simple, and almost timid and taciturn. We appreciate his surprise when he tells us, "I wondered that my love of study, my chaste tastes, some literary aptitude, and some serious views of life above those of my age did not produce as favorable an impression upon the sex as did my fancy dress of a Dalmatian chambermaid and my skill in gymnastic performances. But, then, had I yet gone down into the inextricable depths of the feminine mind? and was I already acquainted with the laws that rule the magnetic attractions of the most bizarre of brains?" The stories Gozzi tells us of life in Dalmatia have a fresh, primitive flavor. No one ever told them before him. Their bloom is untouched, and much of the pleasure one has in reading them comes from that. Some of his pictures of manners are as crisp and as vivid as a fine etching.